The Christiaan Eijkman Award is now accepting nominations
The Christiaan Eijkman medal is awarded to researchers who carry out innovative and critical research in the field of Global Health. Candidates can nominate themselves or be nominated by colleagues. Please submit your nominations before 30th September 2025.
Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch doctor and researcher who investigated tropical diseases while working in the former Dutch East Indies. He pioneered research on the disease beriberi and demonstrated the importance of vitamins for health, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1929. The Christiaan Eijkman medal is awarded in honour of Christian Eijkman’s work and to encourage research in the field that he dedicated his life to.
Medals awarded
The first medal was awarded in 1927, and 53 people have received this award since then. The most recent recipients were medical researchers Prof. Dr Arjen Dondorp and Prof. Dr Rovina Ruslami, who were chosen for their pioneering research in the field of global health.
Prof. Dr Arjen Dondorp received the Eijkman Medal for his malaria research. The work of Dondorp and his team has led to better treatment of severe malaria, a disease that kills 600,000 people each year. He not only described the spread of resistant parasites but also developed a way to use combinations of existing malaria drugs to combat resistance while maintaining good treatment results. That is ground-breaking. The jury praised Dondorp’s broad research agenda and his influence on the field of international healthcare. Arjen Dondorp is affiliated with the University of Oxford, Amsterdam UMC and the Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Prof. Rovina Ruslami was honoured for her ground-breaking tuberculosis (TB) research in Indonesia. Ruslami is leading the way with her clinical pharmacology research. The treatment of TB is complicated by increasing levels of drug resistance and the long duration of treatment. Her work showed, among other things, that a higher dose of the drug rifampicin (a key drug in the treatment of TB) leads to better survival rates in TB meningitis. Rovina Ruslami received her PhD from Radboud UMC and is now working at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Indonesia
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Board members and jury
The board members of the Eijkman Medal Foundation are:
- Prof. Dr Teun Bousema – Radboud UMC
- Prof. Dr Constance Schultsz – Amsterdam UMC/AIGHD
- Prof. Dr Charles Agyemang – Amsterdam UMC
- Dr Billie de Haas – RUG
- Dr Mirjam Bakker – KIT
In 2023 the jury consisted of the board plus two external jury members, in 2025 we expect to follow a similar process.
Ready to nominate? Please do so before September 30th, 17:00 CET.