Guardian health editor wins award for Katine coverage

The Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley , has been named health communicator of the year by the BMJ Group for her two articles that investigated drugs supply systems across Africa. Judges praised Boseley for her "impressive skill of being able to explain complex and important information in an engaging way that makes a subject accessible to a wide audience". The BMJ cited Boseley's two articles that were published on the Katine website in August last year. The first, In Katine, a Coke is easy to buy. Medicine isn't , looked at the difficulties faced by people in rural communities accessing medicines for diseases such as malaria and TB. The second related to a trip to Katine made by Andrew Witty, chief executive of the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline . Witty was invited to visit the sub-county in north-east Uganda by the Guardian to reflect on his promises to cut the prices of GSK medicines in the least developed countries. The BMJ award, which was presented at a ceremony in London last Thursday, celebrates excellence in promoting understanding of medicine and health through the media. Judges said Boseley was chosen "for her articles about the reality of the lack of access to essential medicines for poor people in the developing world... she was also able to describe how the Guardian had persuaded GlaxoSmithKline chief executive Andrew Witty to visit a village in Uganda to see the problems for himself and then recount what steps GSK was planning to take to increase access to essential medicines." Boseley has won a number of awards for her reports on HIV/Aids in Africa, including the One World Media Award, which she's been awarded twice, and the European section of the Lorenzo Natali prize, awarded by the European Commission. Since the launch of the Katine project in 2007, Boseley has written regularly about healthcare in the sub-county. Over the last two years, the Katine project has won two awards – the IVCA Clarion Award for best website and the One World Media Award for its ongoing coverage of a development project.