Newly named Science and Technology Laureate, Dr Niven Narain, has promised to use his US$35,000 cash prize from the Anthony N Sabga Awards for Caribbean Excellence to set up a foundation focused on women’s health in Guyana and the United States.
The Trinidad Guardian today said that Narain made the announcement on Saturday night while accepting his award at the ceremony in Georgetown, Guyana.
The pharmaceutical developer, who serves as chief executive officer of Boston-based BPGbio, said the initiative was inspired by the loss of his grandmother to cancer.
“Tonight, I honour my grandmother,” Narain said. “In taking the funds received from this award, to start the Rukhminia Latchman Foundation for Women’s Health”, the newspaper reported.
He told the audience that the foundation would operate in Georgetown and Miami, with its first project delivering healthcare directly to women through mobile medical units.
“Our first initiative is going to be Women’s Health on Wheels, which brings mobile medical services directly to working mothers, especially single mothers,” he said.
The Trinidad Guardian report said that the announcement drew an immediate response from Patron of the Anthony N Sabga Awards and Executive Chairman of the ANSA McAL Group, A Norman Sabga.
“I will match your donation in the creation of this foundation,” Sabga told Narain. “And we look forward to seeing it growing and growing.”
Narain received the Science and Technology award for his work on artificial intelligence to develop targeted pharmaceuticals.
Narain, 48, was born in Guyana and spent just a few years here before leaving to spend some of his elementary and primary school years in The Bahamas and later, between Florida and New York in the US. Though very young when he left, he can still recall certain things about the land of his birth.
He was born to Ramesh and Leela who both hailed from Berbice and were graduates of the University of Guyana; his dad, a teacher at St Rose’s High, was from Number 64 village on the Corentyne, and his mom, also an educator, was from Number Two village. She taught at Stella Maris Primary and attended the Cyril Potter College of Education.
The family lived on Thomas Street, in proximity to the Georgetown Public Hospital and Narain recalled in a February interview with Stabroek News going for walks to the seawall and visiting Berbice to see his dear grandmother with whom he shared a very close relationship. “Unfortunately, when she moved to New York, she got breast cancer. That really affected me negatively,” he recalled. “In the late 80s to early 90s… everything was all tech; the beginning of the internet, etc. But when she got breast cancer, that’s when I was struck by what cancer can do to not only a patient… but I looked at the effect it had on our family – her children, her brothers and sisters”, he told Stabroek News.
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