William Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Youyou Tu jointly won the 2015 Nobel Prize for medicine for their work against parasitic diseases, the award-giving body said on Monday.

Irish-born Campbell and Japanese Omura won half of the prize for discovering a new drug, avermectin, that has helped the battle against river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, as well as showing effectiveness against other parasitic diseases.

The Chinese scientist Youyou Tu was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria.

Read the article “Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Work on Parasitic Diseases” on reuters.com.