Albert Lasker
Public Service Award
John Wilson
For his dynamic leadership in organizing practical programs to alleviate, prevent and treat blinding eye diseases.
Blinded himself at the age of 12, Sir John later graduated from Oxford with honors.
In 1950, he organized and became the founding director of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind. This organization has focused on the restoration of sight, and development of international resources to control the major causes of increasing blindness throughout the developing world.
In 1975, Sir John became the first president of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. He and Lady Wilson—a major partner in all his activities—have traveled over a million miles to establish, in 56 countries, national agencies for the prevention and treatment of blindness. Their medical teams, last year alone, restored sight to over 139,000 blind people in 16 countries.
In two-thirds of the 42 million blind in the world, their condition is due, especially in the developing countries, to four major eye diseases—trachoma, malnutrition blindness, river blindness and cataracts. Sir John's and the International Agency's ten-year goal is to prevent, control or eradicate these diseases, and thus eventually to reduce by two-thirds the blindness now existing in the world's population.
To Sir John Wilson, brilliant, dedicated, and dynamic international health administrator, this 1979 Albert Lasker Special Public Service Award is given.