Nobel Laureate Tu Youyou was awarded the 2019 UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences by UNESCO on October 22. Tu shared the prize with U.S. doctor Cato Laurencin and professor Kevin McGuigan from Ireland. They won the fifth edition of the award for their "outstanding scientific research projects in the life sciences that have led to an improvement in the quality of human life." The winners will share a financial award worth $350,000.

Tu, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015, "is recognized for her research into parasitic diseases. She discovered an entirely new anti-malarial treatment, artemisinin, which made possible the treatment of thousands of patients in China in the 1980s," according to UNESCO.

Tu was also among the eight prominent figures who received the Medal of the Republic for her outstanding contributions to the country ahead of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.