Tumani Corrah: Building Health Research in Africa

Professor Sir Tumani Corrah is the Emeritus Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and founder and Co-President of the Africa Research Excellence Fund (AREF), which has offices in the UK and The Gambia. Corrah’s interest in medicine began at an early age. Growing up in The Gambia, he noticed young boys “crawling on the floor whilst we were playing football” and then watching his “mother taking my younger siblings to the hospital, where they were given jabs…I realised later that what prevented those boys from playing football was polio, and the injections prevented catastrophes like polio.