Sheikh Hamdan honours winners of Award for Medical Sciences

DUBAI, OCT 21, 2002 (WAM)--Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Deputy Ruler and Minister of Finance and Industry, today honoured the winners of the Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences for 2001/2002. Hamad Abdul Rahman Al Madfa, Health Minister and Chairman of the Award's Board of Governors, praised Sheikh Hamdan for his generosity and his continuous patronage of the Award. In a statement on the occasion, Madfa said that the Award had won the respect of the international medical science community despite its short existence. International winners of the Award included British Professor Rebert Edwards, who won the Grand Hamdan International Award for his work in the obsterics and gynecology (infertility), while the second category of the Award, Hamdan Award for Medical Research Exellence, went to the American Prof. W. French Anderson, who was cited for his research in Gene Therapy of Inherited Disorders. Also British Professor Foo Yew Liew and American Prof. Ake Lernmark shared the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence in their works in Pathogenesis and Therapy of Autoimmune Disorder, while British Prof. Martin Raff also won the same prize for his work in the field of Apoptosis in Disease. The Hamdan Award for Volunteers and Humanitarian Medical Services went to the UAE-based Al Maktoum Foundation, Syrian Dr. Ghassan Shahrour, Dr. William Magee, American, and Dr. Sharadkumar Dischsheet, Indian. The category for original research paper published in the Emirates Medical Journal from inside the UAE went to Dr. Christopher Frank Howarth, from the UAE University in Al Ain, while that of research paper published in the Emirates Medical Journal from outside UAE was won by Dr. Jaffar Ali, from Hamdan Medical Corporation, Doha. The special recognition award of UAE in the field of Medicine and Health went to Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Chancellor of UAE University, while the Hamdan Award for the Best Medical College, Institute or Centre in the Arab World was shared by the Faculty of Medicine, University of Gezira, Sudan, and the Faculty of Medicine, American Unversity of Beirut, Lebanon. WAM/BG