Luiza Helena Trajano, chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Magazine Luiza and Grupo Mulheres do Brasil, will be honored in South Korea by the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), the only international organization exclusively dedicated to vaccines for global health, and by SK Bioscience, a leading biotechnology company in the Asian country, for her contribution to promoting immunization among the population. The award ceremony will take place on April 30 at the IVI headquarters in Seoul.
“We established this award in 2022 to honor individuals who have made notable contributions to vaccine development or promoted immunization worldwide,” explains Jerome Kim, Director-General of IVI.
The 2025 IVI-SK Bioscience Park MahnHoon Award, which honors 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 pioneer of 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 nonprofit organizations that helped significantly increase 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 bring 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.
