The McGill School of Population and Global Health is pleased to announce Zackie Achmat from South Africa as the winner of the inaugural (2024) Paul Farmer Lectureship and Award for Global Health Equity. A world-renowned health and political activist, Mr. Achmat has dedicated his life to the fight for justice and equality, leading to significant and lasting improvements in the health and wellbeing of millions in South Africa. His courageous stance against both government and the pharmaceutical industry has brought the fight for health equity in Sub-Saharan Africa to the global stage.
The Paul Farmer Award for Global Health Equity was established in honour of the late Dr. Paul Farmer, a physician, advocate and global health icon. To honour Paul’s memory, McGill University, with the support of over 530 donors from around the world, created this lectureship and award to annually recognize an individual who models and demonstrates Paul’s vision of a ‘preferential option for the poor’ to achieve equity in health. The award honours individuals (or couples) working in under-served communities whose work is often goes unrecognized.
The first call for nominations resulted in over 60 nominations from around the world. An international selection panel chose Mr. Achmat as the 2024 award recipient. McGill University is grateful to all the donors who contributed to this award and to all individuals who took time to nominate inspiring people from around the world.
“I am privileged and honoured to receive the Paul Farmer Award for Global Health Equity with the recognition that the achievements of the Treatment Action Campaign are based on the activism of the most vulnerable people in our country and the internationalism of people across all continents. I am particularly honoured to be acknowledged in the tradition of Paul Farmer and his colleagues at Partners in Health,” said Mr. Achmat, upon accepting the award. The date for the inaugural lecture and award event at McGill University in Montreal will be announced soon.
Mr. Achmat is a movement builder, political activist and law reformer who has dedicated his life fighting for justice, equality, dignity, and freedom, particularly for working-class people and vulnerable minorities. Schooled by great mentors, Mr. Achmat worked within the African National Congress (ANC) to end white minority rule. Since 1994, he co-founded and led movements such as the Treatment Action Campaign, Equal Education, the Social Justice Coalition, Ndifuna Ukwazi, Reclaim the City, and #UniteBehind. These movements focus on health equity, political education, research, mobilization and litigation.
As a gay rights activist, Mr. Achmat formed crucial South African organizations that helped make the country’s constitution a beacon of justice and equality for all, including LGBTIQ+ people.
In 1998, Mr. Achmat co-founded the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) with Laddie Bosch, Deena Bosch and their mother Lee Bosch, to ensure that pharmaceutical companies make life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) medications affordable for working-class people living with HIV. One of TAC’s landmark victories came in 2002 when the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the government must provide antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Today, South Africa one of the world’s largest public-sector HIV treatment programs, with over five million people on ARV treatment. His work has, literally, saved the lives of tens of millions of people in South Africa and the world over.
By focusing on alleviating the suffering of the poor and vulnerable, engaging and accompanying communities, and advocating for equality regardless of race, sexual orientation or health status, by tackling structural and social determinants of disease, by successfully resisting the commercialization and false scarcity of medicines access, and ultimately galvanizing mass public support towards a more equitable future, Mr. Achmat has helped to imagine, and create over the long term, a better world, where health equity is not only prized, but practiced and achieved, to the betterment of the lives of millions. “Zackie Achmat’s work embodies Dr Paul Farmer’s vision and lifelong work,” said Madhukar Pai, Inaugural Chair, Department of Global and Public Health.
“Through his trail blazing work on improving access to medicines for people living with HIV, Zackie Achmat bent the arc of history for global health equity,” said Tim Evans, Director of the McGill School of Population and Global Health.
McGill SPGH will launch the call for nominations for the 2025 Paul Farmer Award in the spring of 2025.