Donegal welcomes home Nobel Prize winning son who helped find a drug to treat 'river blindness'

An Irish scientist who helped find a drug to treat “river blindness” has been given a civic reception in his native Donegal.

The reception was hosted by the cathaoirleach and by members of Donegal County Council, in recognition of Nobel laureate, Prof William C Campbell, for his outstanding achievement in jointly winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

A native of Ramelton, Prof Campbell was part of a team that discovered a class of drugs called avermectins, whose derivatives have been shown to have “extraordinary efficacy” in treating river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, among other parasitic diseases that affect animals and humans.