Each year, the French Red Cross Foundation rewards the most innovative research projects, promising young researchers and committed careers that put research at the service of the most vulnerable. This year, the Foundation awarded its research prizes to Mamane Sani Souley Issoufou, Carolina Kobelinsky and Vinh-Kim Nguyen for their commitment to social science research.

Mamane Sani Souley Issoufou was awarded in the category "For humanitarian and social research", theme "Access to health" thanks to his work documenting the real practices of stakeholders and micro-reforms, in the service of improving the quality of care.

As a doctoral student at ENS de Lyon, in cotutelle with the Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey, he defended his thesis at Triangle in 2020. 

Subject: Anthropology of a clinical trial : global health issues around a vaccine tested by a humanitarian-scientific complex.

Thesis co-directors: Frédéric Le Marcis (ENS de Lyon, UMR 5206 Triangle) and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey, LASDEL/Niger).

Abstract: In 2015, Epicentre, an epidemiological research center created in 1987 by the humanitarian NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), will begin a randomised clinical trial of a new vaccine against severe forms of diarrhoea in children under five years of age. It is produced by the Serum Institute Of lndia Limited (an Indian pharmaceutical company). The trial is being conducted in Madarounfa, a rural community in southem Niger. This thesis proposes to discuss the global dimensions and local issues surrounding a vaccine, Rotasiil which can be defined as "an African vaccine" if on considers the way it is presented and promoted by the Serwn Institute, MSF, and Epicentre. The Rotasiil vaccine trial is testament to the utopia of global health actors that technology and the omnipotence of medicine can defeat disease b obscuring the context of structural violence in which their intervention takes place (Farmer 2002; Farmer 2002; Galtun · and Hôivik 1971). It also testifies to the emergence of new actors (NGOs and industries) in the field of global healt policies (Bertho-Huidal 2012). This thesis is also interested in the science "in the making" and analyses the social conditions of sample collection, from their analysis in the laboratory to the entry of the results in a database. It ais describes the adjustrnents and negotiations at work in the application of the "gold standard" of clinical trials that are confronted with the interactional context of their implementation (Brives, Le Marcis, and Sanabria 2016).