HCM CITY — The Swiss-Vietnamese Medical Association on Thursday presented awards to four winners of the Alexandre Yersin Prize for Outstanding Publication.

Each winner received a cash award of VNĐ30 million (US$1,300) and a testimonial of recognition.

The medical association established the Alexandre Yersin Prize for Outstanding Publication to recognise Vietnamese scientists who have made important contributions to the medical literature.

Through peer-reviewed publications, they help build Việt Nam’s reputation in the international medical research community.

Another goal of the prize is to foster national and international collaborations for medical education and better health care.

Each publication was evaluated using five standardised criteria, including scientific quality, clinical significance, scientific impact, innovation, and journal prestige.

The winners were Dr. Vương Ngọc Lan and colleagues at the HCM City University of Medicine and Pharmacy for the paper “Freeze-only versus fresh embryo transfer in vitro fertilization” published in the New England Journal of Medicine; Dr. Hà Tấn Đức and colleagues at Cần Thơ General Hospital for the paper “Development and validation of a prognostic model for predicting 30-day mortality risk in medical patients in emergency department” published in Scientific Reports; Dr. Hồ Phạm Thục Lan and colleagues at Tôn Đức Thắng University in HCM City for the paper “Association  Between Lean Mass, Fat Mass, and Bone Mineral Density: A Meta-analysis” published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, and  Dr. Ngô Tất Trung and colleagues at the 108 Military Central Hospital in Hà Nội for the paper “Enrichment of bacterial DNA for the diagnosis of blood stream infections” published in BMC Infectious Diseases.

The prize is named in honor of Dr. Alexandre Émile-John Yersin (1863 – 1943) who was a world-renowned pioneer and a devoted promoter of medical research and education in Việt Nam.

With his discovery of plague bacillus, Yersinia pestis, he made fundamental contributions to the knowledge of plague and helped eliminate the disease that had claimed millions of lives over the centuries. —VNS