One of the UK’s leading advocates for greater awareness and further investigation of Long COVID is amongst a list of the most influential from around the world announced today.
Dr Nisreen Alwan, public health doctor and Associate Professor in Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine, is amongst this year’s BBC 100 Women. For this year, the theme of the list is ‘women who led change in 2020’.
Known for her research into the health and wellbeing of women and children, Dr Alwan has spent most of 2020 focused on the COVID-19 pandemic where she has raised awareness of the need for countries to measure and address long-term ill health from the virus – also known as Long COVID – and not only mortality.
Her frequent calls for further resources and investigations into the effects of Long COVID have been a prevalent theme of her engagements on social media, mainstream media, webinars and journal articles. Whilst she appreciates that Long COVID is a complex issue, she stresses the need to define the illness more clearly, and quickly, in order to manage it more effectively.
“I saw a huge gap in the way the COVID-19 pandemic was measured and tackled as we were only seeing deaths and lab-confirmed cases counted,” said Dr Alwan. “No one was tracking illness from COVID-19. Combining my personal experience with my professional knowledge, I stressed the importance of counting Long COVID.”
The BBC 100 Women list, now in its eighth year now, features women from around the world who have led change this year including Sanna Marin, the Prime Minister of Finland; NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan and British vaccinologist Professor Sarah Gilbert from Oxford’s Jenner Institute.
