A South African HIV researcher who found that a topical gel could stop many women catching the virus has been awarded one of France's top science prizes.
Quarraisha Abdool Karim won the half a million-euro ($551,000) Christophe Merieux Prize for her work for the Durban-based Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), which she heads.
The Institut de France, which runs the prize, praised her work tracing "the cycle of transmission" of the virus, with "young women generally getting it from men 10 years their senior". They also hailed her work on vaccines for the virus and how to treat people who have tuberculosis and are also HIV positive.