Legesse Wolde-Yohannes

“For discovering and campaigning relentlessly for an affordable preventative against bilharzia.”

Legesse Wolde-Yohannes is a horticultural scientist from Ethiopia. He has provided an affordable solution to a fatal illness called bilharzia, or schistosomiasis, which is a debilitating and eventually fatal illness. Schistosomiasis afflicts more than 200 million people in a vast number of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In the 1980s, therapies for schistosomiasis, and molluscicides to kill the snail carriers of the disease, were often far too expensive for the communities that need them. Wolde-Yohannes joined the research work of his fellow Ethiopian Laureate Aklilu Lemma in 1974 and intensively contributed to the study of the suds taken from the fruit of a common African plant, called endod or soapberry. This plant represents a cheap solution against schistosomiasis and is also a locally producible detergent for improved hygiene and an additive for a foaming agent in lightweight concrete preparation.

Legesse Wolde-Yohannes has published several articles on endod cultivation and extraction, soil science plant nutrition and is co-author of a handbook on endod utilisation. He has organised national and international seminars and workshops on endod and bilharzia. He has also carried out several WHO consultancy missions to Africa, Europe and North America in relation to the use of endod for schistosomiasis and zebra mussels control programmes.

It is very often overlooked that the solution to a poor man’s health is close at hand.

Legesse Wolde-Yohannes, 1989 Laureate

Aklilu Lemma’s discovery and the development of endod research

In 1964 a young Ethiopian doctor, 1989 Right Livelihood Laureate Aklilu Lemma, discovered that suds from the fruit of a common African plant, the endod or soapberry, which African women have used as soap for centuries, act as a potent molluscicide. To follow up this discovery, Lemma in 1966 established the Institute of Pathobiology in Addis Ababa University, and for the next 10 years, he directed a team to carry out systematic research on endod. He was joined in this work in 1974 by Legesse Wolde-Yohannes.

The discovery seemed to offer no less than a cheap, locally controllable means of eradicating a disease that is the second greatest scourge, after malaria, in the Global South. Lemma’s early research confirmed this potential. Yet progress in making this endod product available to the people who need it has been extremely slow, for reasons that expose some of the biases and failings of the international medical community.

Progress and the future of endod as a global solution

Lemma’s and Wolde-Yohannes’ persistence has, with the support of key scientists and donors, opened the door to the necessary laboratory and field trials. An endod research and application network has also been established, linking five African countries, and the plant is being grown and used for experimental control of schistosomiasis.

Before his death in 1997, Lemma and colleagues established the Endod Foundation to serve as an umbrella for all endod-related work. Following collaboration with Lemma, the University of Toledo, USA, was granted a US patent on an endod-based molluscicide intended to control the zebra mussels which have recently invaded American lakes and caused extensive damage to water supplies. This has opened a major new hope for marketing and exporting endod as a cash crop.

Legesse Wolde-Yohannes’ contributions and recognition

Legesse Wolde-Yohannes has coordinated endod research in Addis Ababa since 1980, developing methods for its extraction and application and carrying out relevant agrobotanical studies. He is currently an Associate Professor of Biology at Addis Ababa University and also serves as Director of the National Endod Foundation.

For his scientific achievement, Dr Legesse Wolde-Yohannes received the Golden Medal from the University of Oslo, Norway in 1989 and the Golden Medal and Certificate of Merit from Addis Ababa University in 2000.

Since 1999 Dr. Legesse Wolde-Yohannes is senior advisor on endod and medicinal plants to the Ethio Agri-CEFT Private Limited Company. He is involved in promoting agrobotanical studies on endod and other medicinal plants towards large-scale production and processing for local and international marketing.

Image	Type
VIEW MORE