“During medical school, I came across a professor who introduced me to research—up until that point, I was content with being an excellent clinician, but that was the moment when I realised that I was missing out on making a larger impact on the population at large”, recalls Assistant Professor Aliasgar Esmail, Pulmonologist at the Groote Schuur Hospital and Deputy Head of the Centre for Lung Infection and Immunity at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Lung Institute in South Africa. As one of two recipients of the 2024 Stephen Lawn TB-HIV Research Leadership Prize, Esmail felt “so overwhelmed and humbled” to have received the award.

“I think what I’ve really wanted to do since I was a teenager was work on HIV and TB, and conditions that affected people who were disproportionately poor and vulnerable. And research was a nice way into that, but—the purpose of what the research was for, that came before the methods, was justice and solidarity, and a conviction that everybody matters. That was really, genuinely important. That’s how I ended up in public health”, says Rachael Burke, joint winner of the 2024 Stephen Lawn TB-HIV Research Leadership Prize.

Health screening, when well designed and implemented, can be one of the most effective interventions to prevent disease and improve health outcomes.1 For decades, suboptimal prevention measures for non-communicable diseases have resulted in rising deaths and health-care costs in Indonesia. Understanding that a major policy shift was required for disease prevention, the Government of Indonesia launched a nationwide screening programme, Pemeriksaan Kesehatan Gratis (PKG), in February, 2025.

Depemokimab significantly improved clinically relevant coprimary endpoints versus placebo and was well tolerated, supporting its use as a twice per year treatment option, with the potential to reduce treatment burden for people with CRSwNP.