Professor Miriam Were (Center) after receiving the Medal of the Italian Cabinet.

Professor Were, Chairperson of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) and of the Kenya National AIDS Control Council (NACC), has based her life’s work on the principle that recognises that: “Enabling the poor to achieve good health is a means of helping them escape from the vicious circle of poverty.”

“My dream is that Africa will determine its own development and free its people from the poverty cycle and from ill-health so as to achieve independence in the proper use of the immense wealth of Africa in the context of just use of resources within African countries, and fair international trade,” she told participants at the ceremony.

In awarding her, the Pio Manzu Scientific Committee recognised her daily battle to further the emancipation and freedom of the African Continent.

The Pio Manzu International Centre is a non-governmental organisation of the United Nations and the UNIDO where in-depth study of the main economic and scientific aspects of the relationship between man and his environment is carried on. The centre is granted a limited number of medals each year by the Italian Cabinet and is authorised to decide whom to confer.

Professor Were is the first African woman to receive the award. Another Kenyan Professor, leading writer Ngungi wa Thiongo was recognised by the centre in 2002.

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