THE VIRCHOW FOUNDATON
KAI WEGNER
GOVERNING MAYOR OF BERLIN
The Virchow Prize 2025
Towards Health for All
IS BESTOWED UPON
“for their pioneering, lifelong leadership in advancing maternal, newborn and child health equity through community-centred, evidence-based research”
Joint Statement of Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Zulfiqar A. Bhutta
The Virchow Prize 2025 Laureates
“We are truly humbled to be jointly awarded the Virchow Prize 2025.
For both of us, this honour is not only a recognition of our individual journeys but also of mentors, countless partners, students, colleagues, communities, donors, and families who have shaped and supported our work and shared in the vision of a healthier, more equitable world.
While our paths in research and advocacy may have focused on different aspects of women’s, maternal, newborn, and child health, we are united by a shared belief: that scientific knowledge has its greatest impact when it uplifts those most often left behind, and when it is guided by compassion, solidarity, and respect for human dignity.
This prize strengthens our conviction that addressing deep-rooted inequities requires listening to communities, working with them to strengthen local leadership, and ensuring that health solutions are responsive to social realities.
In the spirit of Rudolf Virchow, we hope that this recognition will encourage the next generation of scientists to pursue work that bridges disciplines and geographies, and that it will inspire stronger commitments to building just and inclusive health systems for all.”
The Virchow Prize 2025 Announcement
as made by
Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Christoph Markschies
President & Co-Founder | Virchow Foundation
President | Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Prof. Dr. Detlev Ganten
Co-Founder & Member of the Board of Trustees | Virchow Foundation
Roland Göhde
Co-Founder & CEO | Virchow Foundation
PREAMBLE
Achieving a resilient, equitable, and sustainable future for humanity demands solutions that are global in vision, systemic in design, and ethically anchored. The United Nations 2030 Agenda provides the integrative blueprint for such transformation, recognising health as a unifying thread across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and as such, an entry point to social justice, gender equity, and planetary stewardship.
As we confront escalating health disparities, environmental degradation, and multiple, interconnected global fragilities – from pandemics, conflicts, and forced migration to food insecurity and climate change – the imperative for multilateralism and transregional solidarity grows ever more urgent. These complex and compounding challenges reveal the limits of siloed solutions and underscore the need for inclusive governance frameworks.
Advancing health for all, particularly the most vulnerable, demands not only biomedical innovation but also sociopolitical courage that engages with lived realities. In this context, the Virchow Prize serves as a unique stage to champion multilateralism and elevate models of cooperation that address root causes of inequity and protect planetary and human health.
In this spirit, the Virchow Prize celebrates transformative contributions that mirror Rudolf Virchow’s conviction that medicine is fundamentally anchored in social science. The Prize honours those who operationalise this vision by recognizing leadership that challenges injustice and fosters structural change.
On behalf of the Virchow Foundation and the Virchow Prize Committee, it is our great privilege to announce that the Virchow Prize 2025 is bestowed upon
QUARRAISHA ABDOOL KARIM
AND
ZULFIQAR A. BHUTTA
“for their pioneering, lifelong leadership in advancing maternal, newborn and child health equity through community-centred, evidence-based research”
Through decades of interdisciplinary research, groundbreaking clinical trials, and transformative policy influence, both laureates have helped redefine the global health architecture by focusing on those historically excluded from mainstream health systems and scientific discourse.
Both laureates epitomize Virchow’s tradition of integrating scientific rigour with social consciousness; advancing practices in global health that are empirically grounded, equity-driven, and politically transformative.
Quarraisha Abdool Karim is an internationally acclaimed clinical epidemiologist and global health leader, whose groundbreaking research has transformed the scientific understanding of HIV prevention in women, with far-reaching implications for maternal and adolescent health. Her work has had a profound and lasting impact on public health policy and practice in South Africa and globally.
As Associate Scientific Director of CAPRISA (Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa), Professor Abdool Karim led the landmark CAPRISA 004 trial (2007-2010), which provided the first proof of the concept that antiretroviral drugs could prevent HIV infection in women. Recognised by Science as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2010, this pivotal study laid the foundation for the development of microbicides and other female-controlled HIV prevention methods, critical tools in protecting adolescent girls and young women, who remain disproportionately affected by the epidemic. This breakthrough also empowered women with tools to protect their own health, an essential step toward gender equity in healthcare.
Earlier in her career, Abdool Karim conducted pivotal population-based surveys in South Africa that revealed young women acquire HIV infection at younger ages and much higher rates than their male peers, exposing a critical prevention gap rooted in gender-power imbalances. Her subsequent research across sub-Saharan Africa confirmed that this age-sex difference is a defining and unique driver of the region’s HIV epidemic.
Nearly 25 years later, advances in genetic analysis techniques validated her early epidemiological findings by illuminating the transmission dynamics that sustain this age-sex disparity.
Her extensive publication record, including over 300 peer-reviewed articles and co-editorship of the Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health, demonstrates intellectual leadership that bridges empirical science, policy translation, and advocacy.
Beyond her scientific contributions, she has played a transformative role in building research capacity across Africa. Through the Columbia University–Southern African Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Programme, she has mentored over 600 scientists, fostering sustainable, locally-led research capacity that empowers African women scientists and ensures long-term health system resilience.
Her work continues to influence national and international HIV prevention strategies, particularly those targeting adolescent girls and young women – a group at the intersection of gender inequality, poverty, and health vulnerability.
In recognition of her lifelong dedication to science and public health, Professor Abdool Karim has received numerous awards, including the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2020), L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Award (2014), and Fellowship to the Royal Society (2025), cementing her as one of the most influential scientists in global health.
In line with Virchow’s vision, Abdool Karim positions health as a manifestation of social determinants and power structures, challenging the persistent gendered neglect in global health research and development. She has consistently underscored the intersection of biology and structural violence, showing that empowerment and prevention must go hand-in-hand to curb epidemics and sustain health gains.
Professor Abdool Karim’s exemplary leadership, scientific excellence, and life-long commitment to improving the lives of women and children make her a truly deserving recipient of the Virchow Prize.
Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is a globally recognised paediatrician, epidemiologist, and public health scientist whose pioneering research over the last several decades has advanced maternal, newborn and child health, improving millions of lives around the world. His work has been instrumental in shaping global health guidelines and influencing national policies for maternal, child health and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries.
As the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Health and Development at Aga Khan University and Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health, Dr. Bhutta has championed community-based primary care models, large-scale randomised trials, and implementation research within vulnerable communities and fragile settings. His work demonstrated the effectiveness of locally embedded interventions, empowering community health workers and nutrition programs targeting the most critical first 1,000 days of life.
His research has also shaped World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and national policies, advancing strategies to reduce maternal and child mortality in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and humanitarian settings. With over 1,400 scientific publications, leadership across several Lancet series on maternal and child undernutrition, newborn survival and actions in conflict affected populations, his team’s work has focused on reducing disparities in health and development in some of the most marginalized populations. As a leader in the Exemplars methodology, his team’s work has helped define strategies that have led to exceptional improvements by countries in reducing childhood stunting and maternal anaemia. Professor Bhutta has played an active role in WHO, UNICEF, and PMNCH (Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health), as well as the International Pediatric Association. Having led over a dozen large cluster-randomized effectiveness trials, his contributions exemplify scientific excellence that translates into life-saving policies and equitable health systems.
In recognition of his decades of service, Dr. Bhutta has been awarded the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2022), Roux Prize (2021), the Rosen Von Rosenstein Award (2025) and the International Paediatric Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2025). He is a recipient of the President of Pakistan Pride of Performance Award (2017), Sitara-e-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence 2024) for his contributions to child health in Pakistan. He was made an officer of the Order of Canada in December 2024 in recognition of his contributions to global maternal and child health policy.
Dr. Bhutta’s visionary leadership and lifelong commitment to health equity make him a truly deserving recipient of the Virchow Prize. His work continues to inspire a new generation of health professionals and policymakers committed to achieving health for all.
COMMON MERITS OF THE VIRCHOW PRIZE LAUREATES 2025
Professors Abdool Karim and Bhutta have each profoundly reshaped global health policies and guidelines. By championing the health, dignity, and agency of women, children, and adolescents in underserved, communities their lifelong contributions are not only evidence-rich and policy-relevant, but also normatively clear: health advances must be just, inclusive, and co-created with the communities they serve.
Their careers exemplify the enduring relevance of Virchow’s vision and the power of socially conscious science to catalyse structural transformation in the service of global health equity.