Andy Asamoah re-elected President of Institut Pasteur

Mr Andy Asamoah, a former Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva and Executive Chairman of A&C Development Company Limited, has been re-elected as the President of the Foundation of the Institut Pasteur, Dakar, Senegal for another four-year term.

Mr Asamoah, who was the Director in charge of Human Resource and Administration at WHO, was first elected President of the institute in 2010. 

The Institut Pasteur in Dakar was created in 1923 as part of the worldwide French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases and vaccines. 

It has made breakthrough discoveries in modern medicine and it was the first to isolate HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. 

Over the years, eight of its scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology. 

In 2010, following an agreement signed between the government of Senegal and the Institut Pasteur of France, the institute was turned into a non-profit Senegalese foundation to contribute to public health in Africa by implementing activities of research, teaching, epidemiology, biology and production of yellow fever vaccine. 

The institute is a WHO Collaborating Centre and has been at the forefront of the recent fight against Ebola in the sub-region.