BMJ Group Award for Lifetime Achievement 2010

BMJ Group Award for Lifetime Achievement

Category proudly sponsored by: 

For the individual who has, over his or her working lifetime, made a unique and substantial contribution to improving health care, whether in clinical practice, health services, public health, health policy, medical education, or medical research.

Marleen Temmerman has become a true champion for health care during her career—a pioneer for women’s health and one of the few clinicians who have managed to successfully combine politics and medicine to improve health care. She is currently professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Ghent University, head of the obstetrics and gynaecology department at the Ghent University Hospital, and a senator in the Belgian parliament.

After graduating and working as a gynaecologist she moved to Kenya in 1987, where she conducted research into HIV and AIDS and was a lecturer at University of Nairobi. After working in Pumwani Maternity Hospital in the slums of Nairobi, Professor Temmerman fought for improvements in health care of poor people and for the reproductive and sexual rights of women.

In 1992 she joined Ghent University, where she became the first female gynaecology professor in Belgium; and two years later she created the International Centre for Reproductive Health (ICRH), based in Ghent and Kenya—now one of the main centres of excellence in this field.

In 2007 she was elected to the Belgian Senate, where she has worked to build connections between research, field experience, technical expertise, and politics.

Professor Temmerman says: “This award gives me the forum to highlight the values and the topics that are important to me and to ask for attention and commitment from the scientific and political communities of this world for women’s health and rights worldwide.

“People who have helped me include numerous friends and colleagues all over the world, my collaborators at ICRH, the universities where I work, the political and social groups I am active in, and my family.

“Winning this award means a lot, as it is a recognition of our work—not only of its scientific value but also of the importance of combining science with social responsibility and social values.”