Luiza Helena Trajano, chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Magazine Luiza and the Women of Brazil Group, 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 30th at the IVI headquarters in Seoul.
"We established this award in 2022 to honor some personalities who made remarkable contributions to the development of vaccines or encouraged immunization around the world," 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 awarded to Belgian professor Pierre Van Damme and American physician Ananda Sankar Bandyopadhyay, who led innovations in vaccine research, including the development of a safer oral polio vaccine; and to Luiza Helena Trajano and Svetha Janumpalli, founder and CEO of New Incentives and pioneers 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 helped significantly increase immunization rates in Brazil and Nigeria, respectively, through innovative programs.
"I am very happy with this tribute and I share this recognition with all 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 can achieve surprising results," says Luiza Helena Trajano.
