AsianScientist (May 31, 2016) – At the 69th World Health Assembly this year, Dr. Palize Mehmett, a Chinese doctor, received the 2016 United Arab Emirates Health Foundation Prize and US$20,000 in prize money for spreading information about good nutrition, breastfeeding and drinking water safety.
For nearly three decades, Mehmett’s work was focused on basic public health initiatives in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. In that time, she visited 97 counties and cities and more than 300 villages populated largely by Muslims, covering 167 square kilometers in Xinjiang.
Thanks to her efforts, since 2012, more than 200,000 children of six months to two years of age in poor rural areas have been receiving a free nutrition package subsidized by the central government.
Mehmett has also trained thousands of primary health care personnel to use low-cost nutritional interventions, which have had an impact on tens of millions of people. To take her message directly to the Uyghur people, she has delivered scores of lectures with titles such as “My Breakfast, My Way—Happy Learning and Healthy Growth,” and translated books on nutrition into Uyghur for Xinjiang’s lay audiences.
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Source: World Health Organization.
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