Marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge. Sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. Gymnast Simone Biles. Swimmer Katie Ledecky. Handball star Nikola Karabatić. Basketball star Kevin Durant. Tennis champion Rafael Nadal.
These well-known Olympic gold medal winners are back this week as the 2024 summer Olympic games get underway in Paris, France. As they join more than 10,000 other athletes to once again reach for at least one of the more than 300 gold medals, millions will be watching and cheering.
This summer there is another gold medal in contention. Few will recognise the competitors, who have also trained extensively and risen to the top of their field. There will be some social media videos but no prime-time coverage. Certainly, no cereal box pictures.
And yet, whoever wins it would have saved millions of lives.
It’s the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal, a prestigious award presented each year since 1994 by the Sabin Vaccine Institute. Named after physician and scientist Albert B. Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine, refused to patent it, and then spent much of his life advocating for the elimination of polio globally, the award honours a distinguished individual or team for extraordinary contributions in the field of vaccinology or a complementary field.
Nominations have begun for the Sabin gold medal with little of the fanfare that accompanies Olympic tryouts. It’s a time of thoughtful submissions, recommending scientists who spend their time trying to move humanity forward in the quiet of a research laboratory and in under-resourced communities where many of these diseases leave a trail of death and destruction. Over the last 30+ years, the Sabin Gold medal has honored vaccine inventors like Dr. Paul Offit (2018, rotavirus), Dr. Kathrin Jansen (2022, HPV), and Dr. Ruth Nussenzweig (2008, malaria). It has also celebrated those who have helped eradicate disease with vaccines, such as Dr. Ciro A. de Quadros (2000), a famous epidemiologist renowned for efforts to end smallpox and polio in Latin America.
The first Sabin Gold Medal winner, Dr. Donald A. Henderson (1994), directed the decades-long World Health Organization effort to eradicate smallpox, one of history’s deadliest diseases, estimated to have killed more than 300 million just in the 20th century.
Maurice R. Hilleman (1997) is credited with developing more vaccines than any other person in history – including for measles, mumps, rubella, Marek’s disease, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and adenoviruses.
Dr. Jan Holmgren (2017), who developed the first effective oral cholera vaccine, is still working on new generations of cholera vaccine which are desperately needed to halt today’s increasing outbreaks.
Gold Medal recipients have collectively worked on vaccines for more than 30 major diseases, including COVID-19, meningitis, Lyme disease, pneumonia, dengue, and malaria. It has honoured those who trained vaccinologists and those who led government efforts to support vaccine research, safety, and deployment.
We can only admire and celebrate the amazing talents, tenacity and accomplishments of the athletes who receive gold medals on the Olympic podium these next few weeks. As we cheer on those who are pushing the limits of human endurance, let’s also acknowledge those worthy of this other gold medal – one that recognizes those who help all of us win the race against disease, disability, and death.
The stated vision of the Olympics is to build a better world through sport. Join Sabin in helping us celebrate those who build a better world through science by nominating a vaccinologist for 2025.
