Motswana named 100 most influential people in the world
TIME has named Dr Sikhulile Moyo to the 2022 TIME100, its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Dr. Moyo is the Research Laboratory Director at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP), a health research and training collaboration established in 1996 between the Government of Botswana and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Sikhulile Moyo is a Zimbabwean virologist working as the laboratory director of the Botswana–Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership and a research associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Moyo (at BHP) and Professor Tulio de Oliviera (at the Stellenbosch University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal) and their colleagues are jointly credited with the discovery of the B.1.1.529 SARS-CoV-2 variant, subsequently named Omicron by the World Health Organization. Omicron and its sub variants have become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variants causing COVID-19 globally.
“This discovery demonstrates the potential to leverage existing local human and infrastructural capacity to participate in cutting-edge scientific pursuits for the benefit of local, regional, and global scientific public health advances,” said Dr Joseph Makhema, Chief Executive Officer of the BHP.
“We regard this recognition of one of our own, as a vote of confidence in the quality of scientific expertise that reside in our country. It is a true demonstration that Botswana can be counted amongst a league of countries that have developed the requisite scientific knowledge and infrastructure that can help us and the world, to respond to current and future health challenges,” said Ms Grace Muzila, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health.
Dr. Moyo has served as Co-Scientific Scientist to the Botswana Presidential COVID-19 Task Force, working closely with the National Public Health Laboratory and Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) on the COVID-19 response. [Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership]
