Photos: Nana Addo Visits Noguchi’s Birth Place

By Justice Dzido On Dec 13, 2018

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo ended his three-day official visit to Japan on Thursday, 13 December 2018, with a visit to Inawashiro, the birth place of Dr. Hideyo Noguchi.

Hideyo Noguchi, also known as Seisaku Noguchi, was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who in 1911 discovered the agent of syphilis as the cause of progressive paralytic disease.

Dr Noguchi is remembered as the man who laid the foundation for the strong relations between Ghana and Japan, which led to formal establishment of diplomatic relations 30 years later in 1957.

Hideyo Noguchi was born on November 9, 1876 as the eldest son of a farm family. He was named Seisaku.

The Asian bacteriologist moved to Ghana to continue his research, which eventually led him to discover the vaccine for Yellow Fever in 1911.

He suffered a serious burn on his left hand when he fell onto a fireplace at the age of one and half. He got excellent grades at elementary school with his hard work. He underwent an operation on his left hand by Dr. Kanae Watanabe with support from teachers and friends when he was in Inawashiro Elementary School.

Because of this operation, he determined to be a doctor and became a medical student of Kaiyo Hospital in Wakamatsu. He worked hard day and night to prepare for the National Medical Practitioners Qualifying Examination. He died of the same disease in 1928.

In a show of appreciation to him, the street in front of the Japanese Embassy in Accra has been recently renamed in his honour in addition to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, located at the University of Ghana.

Early period of his stay in the United States

Hideyo Noguchi went to the United States to meet Dr. Flexner, for whom Hideyo had once served as an interpreter while working at Kitasato Institute.
After he was highly evaluated for his study of snake venoms, he got a scholarship to study at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark and learned the basics of bacteriology.

When the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was established, Dr. Flexner was appointed as the director. He employed Hideyo as an assistant at the Institute. Hideyo was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his study of syphilis spirochete and achieved worldwide acclaim. He worked on many studies as a member of the Rockefeller Institute.