IWD2022: Here are incredible health inventions and discoveries by women
Women have greatly shaped healthcare and research.
What you need to know:
- Women have made incredible contributions to the world of healthcare and medicine.
- Their work is helping improve the health and well-being of people everywhere, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.
- From developing lifesaving cancer treatments to creating innovative health inventions that improve lives every day, these women are making a real difference.
The history of health inventions and discoveries is a long and illustrious one, filled with names of great men who have changed the course of medicine. However, many people do not know that women have played a considerable role in shaping this history.
From developing ground-breaking medical treatments to inventing life-saving devices, women have greatly shaped healthcare.
Here is a list of women who have incredibly impacted the world of health and medicine.
Beth Stevens
Stevens is a neuroscientist who has made ground-breaking discoveries about the role of microglia cells in brain development. Her work has improved the understanding of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's.
It was previously believed that cells linked to the body's immune system, rather than the nervous system protected the brain from intruders and cleared up debris after a disease.
However, Stevens showed microglia cells play a critical role in neuron development and functions and can even influence the growth of new neurons.
Her work is paving the way for new treatments for neurological diseases, and her discoveries are changing the understanding of how the brain works.
Maimuna Majmuderin
As a public health researcher, Maimuna Majumder is working to understand how diseases spread and how to prevent them. She is particularly interested in the spread of infectious diseases. In 2020, Majumder's team worked on simulating and predicting the spread of COVID-19.
She is best known for devising creative methods of gathering, using, and visualising non-traditional public health data sources, like local media reports, to monitor disease occurrences.
She developed one of the first projections on how each infected individual would cause many new infections if no action is taken to control the epidemic's spread.
Nina Shah
Cancer has been a leading cause of death for centuries. Despite all the progress made in understanding and treating it, there is still no cure. However, cancer treatment is starting to change with the advent of CAR T-cell therapy.
CAR T-cell therapy involves removing cells from a patient's blood, modifying them to target and kill cancer cells, and then injecting them back into the patient. This treatment has shown great promise in treating various types of cancer.
It is also less toxic than traditional chemotherapy, making it more tolerable for patients. As a result, the treatment has seen great success for cancer patients.
Nina Shah is one of the pioneers of CAR T-cell therapy targeting multiple myeloma cancer. Her work is changing the face of cancer treatment, and paving the way for a cure.
Other great women making a difference in health and medicine:
•Mary-Claire King: She is best known for identifying the BRCA1 gene responsible for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
•Dr. Patricia Bath: She is an ophthalmologist who invented a laser device used to treat glaucoma.
•Madam CJ Walker: She was the first African American woman to become a millionaire. She developed a line of hair care products for black women.
•Dr. Jane Cooke Wright: She was a trailblazer in chemotherapy, developing a method for testing the effects of cancer medications using human tissue culture.
•Dorothy Hodgkin: She won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structure of atomic molecules, including insulin. Using X-ray crystallography, she was able to determine the structure of molecules.
•Gertrude Belle Elion: She developed a number of drugs for the treatment of cancer.
