Luiza Helena Trajano, President of the Board of Directors of Magazine Luiza and the Grupo Mulheres do Brasil, will be honored in South Korea by the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), the only international organization dedicated exclusively to vaccines for global health, and by SK Bioscience, a leading biotechnology company in the Asian country, for her contribution to promoting population immunization. The award ceremony will take place on April 30 at the IVI headquarters in Seoul.
“We established this award in 2022 to honor some personalities who have made remarkable contributions to vaccine development or have promoted immunization worldwide,” explains Jerome Kim, Director-General of IVI.
The 2025 IVI-SK Bioscience Park MahnHoon award, honoring the legacy of the late company vice president, Dr. Park MahnHoon, will be granted to Belgian professor Pierre Van Damme and American doctor Ananda Sankar Bandyopadhyay, who led innovations in vaccine research, including the development of a safer oral polio vaccine; and Luiza Helena Trajano and Svetha Janumpalli, founder and CEO of New Incentives and a pioneer in an innovative incentive strategy known as Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) to improve health outcomes in underserved communities in Nigeria.
Both Luiza Helena and Janumpalli founded non-profit organizations that have significantly increased immunization rates in Brazil and Nigeria, respectively, through innovative programs.
“I am very happy with this honor and share this recognition with all the organized civil society that helped me deliver vaccines to the most remote corners of Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is proof that when the population organizes itself, it achieves surprising results,” says Luiza Helena Trajano.
