Services to International Neurology Award

Professor Michel Dumas really deserves this Medal for Service to International Neurology. Let me tell you a story that illustrates why. It is about a great man whose life is a wonderful story of adventures and generosity.

Do you believe me if I tell you that, in reality, everything really started when Michel Dumas’ father, member of a great and wealthy family from South France, decided to give up all the comfort and great opportunities to help small village farmers in West Africa improve their productivity and wellness?

Michel Dumas was born in Bamako, Mali in 1934 while his parents were sent to Mali by the French colonial administration. Around the same time, another person was also following her father who also had the same ‘foolish’ idea of leaving the great French Nation to dedicate his life to help farmers in Guinea, another West African state. Michel recently told me that, it is during his journey back from vacation in France that he met the wonderful lady who would become his wife. A scenario very close to the one from the famous Titanic movie where Leonard Di Caprio and Kate Winslet fall deeply in love…except this boat reached the warm and sunny coast of Dakar, where beautiful daughters and sons were born, grew up and became respectively: Caroline as France Ambassador in Jordan, Jean-Luc as great travelling Professor of Neuro-radiology and Dean of a Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and Véronique as Air France crew member.

The Dumas, for now a century, have been travelling around the world doing good to make it a better place. Michel Dumas is a real African, more African than me and before me. But he is more than that… He is a Global Neurologist. He became Heads of Departments of Neurology in Dakar, then in Limoges, where he created the very first Tropical Neurology Institute in France, in 1976.

Member of several international neurological and health institutions, he is the author or co-author of over 700 publications, books chapters of major Public Health and Education handbooks, Seminars and Textbooks. For the past 40 years, he developed a real scientific and human network on Neuroinfectiology and Neuro-epidemiology. Pr Dumas has trained a great number of Neurologists and Professors who, themselves, are right now setting up Departments of Neurology in Universities all over the world. Across the developing world, us from there, are at the Sixth generation of Neurologists descending from his Heritage built by Henri Collomb to whom he succeeded and who was the grandfather of Neuropsychiatry in Francophone African countries.

His continuous and hard work has been recognised and awarded worldwide. He has played a crucial role in implementing Neurology training, care and research in Africa, South-East Asia and South America. So, today we are awarding this great man in Santiago and in front of the world and many of his grand, grand, grandsons from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pan Arab world. Prof. Michel Dumas will be cited among the greatest contributors of World Neurology development for achieving WFN’s vision and mission. We respect him. We just love him. He truly deserves our Achievement Award.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my honour and pleasure, as one of his “Grand-Son”, to introduce Professor Michel Dumas, for his Medal for Service to International Neurology. The World Neuro-Community greets him.                

FELICITACIONES, Professor Michel Dumas….!

Santiago, Chile, November 2^nd, 2015                                       

Citation by Prof. Amadou Gallo DIOP, MD, PhD, November 2015 on presenting an award for services to international neurology at the WCN2015, Chile.