International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8 March 2018 and this year, the theme is #PressforProgress which encourages everyone in workspaces and the community to act, think and be more gender inclusive.
In conjunction with the celebration, 1Twenty80 has decided to look back and remember some of the most influential women in history who changed the world of medicine.
- Chan Yoke-Fun – Developed therapeutic peptides against an enterovirus in Hand, Food and Mouth Disease.
- Tu Youyou – Developed an anti-malaria drug based on traditional herbal medicine.
- Elizabeth Blackwell – The first woman doctor in the United States of America.
- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson – The first English female physician who opened the London School of Medicine for Women.
- Francoise Barre – Sinoussi – A virologist in Paris who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
- Clara Barton – She founded the American Red Cross after caring for wounded soldiers as a nurse during the Civil War.
- Rebecca Lee Crumpler – The first African-American woman to become a physician and cared for slaves who did not have access to healthcare.
- Jane Cooke Wright – Dr. Wright developed chemotherapy delivery methods with the use of a catheter.
- Alice Hamilton – A toxicologist who revealed unhealthy working conditions in factories by applying unusual research methods. Her efforts also helped pass a state law in Illinois (US), which compensates workers who are exposed to hazardous chemicals at work.
