TIME on Monday celebrated the 100 most influential people leading change in healthcare at a special dinner. The first TIME100 Health list highlights doctors, scientists, business leaders, advocates and others at the forefront of major industry shifts.
After a panel discussion on prioritizing women’s health, three TIME100 Health honorees toasted how to survive name, a severe gangrenous disease of the mouth and face; healthcare champions pioneering COVID-related research and treatments; and hospitals under attack in conflict zones.
Surviving noma
Fidel Strub, a Noma survivor, led an awareness campaign about the disease, which mainly affects malnourished children living in extreme poverty. In 2023, the WHO officially recognized noma as a neglected tropical disease, remembering that early detection is essential for effective treatment. Noma can be fatal and seriously disfigure its victims; It typically starts as inflammation of the gums, before destroying facial tissues and bones if left untreated.
Strub thanked the doctor for saving his life and talked about turning to advocacy to feel empowered. He highlighted the 27 surgeries he had to reconstruct his face. “When Dr. Zala first saw me, I was just skin and bones. He had very little hope, but yet he literally fought to save my life,” Strub said. “Just learning how to blow out a candle took me three years of speech therapy.”
Pioneers of the COVID response
Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, highlighted more than a dozen TIME100 Health honorees who helped shape the world’s response to the pandemic. “Somehow, during the course of the pandemic, I went from cardiologist to covidologist,” he said. “I never planned this.”
Topol says Monday’s event is the first time he’s met many of these people working on COVID solutions in person — although he’s become close friends with some. Among those he recognized were researchers who have closely followed Long Covid: Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, and Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Hospitals under attack
Alaa Murabit — director of global policy, advocacy and communications at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — spoke about beginning her medical career in a conflict zone and how she is inspired by frontline healthcare workers in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen and Sudan .
Murabit said in his toast that healthcare facilities have increasingly been caught up in political violence over the past year. “Hospitals, which are intended to be places of healing and hope – I always say that a hospital is more spiritual to me than any mosque, church or synagogue because you hear more prayers there – become, at best, overloaded and, at best, at worst, attacked,” she said. “It will come as no surprise to many of you that in these moments of crisis and insecurity, it is women and children who are most vulnerable. Violence exacerbates infectious diseases, exacerbates malnutrition and maternal and infant death.”
Murabit spoke in particular about Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed more than 35,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. She highlighted that the majority of those killed were believed to be women and children.
Murabit also paid tribute to female healthcare workers – noting that they make up more than two-thirds of the healthcare workforce. “They are on the front lines of providing care in the worst circumstances,” she said. “We’ve been talking about everything from hyperemesis to menopause to COVID; you can imagine how much worse it is when there are bombs and bullets overhead.”
The TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of Healthcare was hosted by Eli Lilly, Northwell Health, Deloitte, On purposeA podcast by Jay Shetty and Apeiron Investments.
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