(AGI) Stockholm, Oct 5 - The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine hasbeen awarded to three scientists, the Swedish Academy announcedon Monday. The winners are Ireland's William C. Campbell andJapan's Satoshi Omura, for discovering a new treatment forinfections caused by parasites, and China's Youyou Tu for herresearch into a new anti-malaria treatment. "It is a really agreat success that the Nobel Prize for Medicine this year wasgiven for the important discoveries and new treatments againstmalaria and other parasitic diseases that are among the maincauses of death in childhood worldwide," Susanna Esposito toldAgi. Ms Esposito is Director of the Paediatric Highly IntensiveCare Unit at the Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale MaggiorePoliclinico in Milan, and President of the World Associationfor Infectious Diseases and Immunological Disorders (WAidid)."They are often neglected diseases mainly affecting developingcountries, epidemiological situations that cannot count ontheir own funds for drug development and that are often oflittle interest to the pharmaceutical industry. In addition,one of the drugs, artemisinin, is derived from a preparationused for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine asa febrifuge. This makes the results obtained by today'sprizewinning doctors even more outstanding. New treatmentsagainst malaria and other parasites, including onchocerciasis(a leading cause of blindness in Africa's poorest countries)can help reduce worldwide infant and child mortality by up to30 percent." Ms Esposito was particularly keen to praise YouyouTu. "The fact that a woman and someone of Chinese nationalityhas won the Nobel Prize is equally important. In recent yearswe have seen a growing number of women in medicine, a course ofstudy that requires great effort and tenacity. This world levelrecognition gives hope that more and more women doctors canachieve prominent positions, with perseverance, determinationand sacrifice." (AGI). .