Aklilu Lemma

Aklilu Lemma was born in Ijaji on September 18, 1935. Earning his doctorate in parasitology from Johns Hopkins University in 1964, Lemma returned to Ethiopia to become Professor of Pathology and Dean of Science at Haile Selassie I University.

In 1964, observing that downstream from village washing sites dead freshwater snails accumulated where women washed clothes with endod berries, Lemma proved that endod crushed berries kill the snail vectors of bilharzia without harming fish. In 1989, he and collaborator Legesse Wolde-Yohannes won the Right Livelihood Award (the Alternative Nobel) for this life-saving indigenous medical discovery.