Our mum, Professor Val Curtis passed away in October 2020, due to cancer, at the age of 62. She was the Director of the Environmental Health Group at LSHTM, still becoming a fierce old battleaxe (in her own words), and was an inspirational professor, colleague, teacher, mother, friend and life partner. She was fiercely intelligent, blunt, silly, driven and focused, always asking herself how she could do more, how she could have a bigger impact on the world. She loved winning a point in tennis, climbing the tallest hill in sight, opera and weird modern composers, ASMR videos, dancing and African fashion. She made handwashing matter before anyone had heard of coronavirus. She saved thousands of lives. She was our mum. 

The Queen of Hygiene

The only person probably ever to give a speech at the United Nations waving around a plastic poo, mum almost single handedly put hygiene on the map. She had a multidisciplinary background, spanning engineering, public health, and evolutionary anthropology and was the first ‘disgustologist,’ being the primary instigator of the hypothesis that disgust could be explained as an evolved response to environmental threats of disease.

Mum was especially committed to making an impact in Sub-Saharan Africa, having lived and worked in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso, where we were raised in our early years, and in India, where she considered her contributions as a behaviour change advisor to the nationwide Swachh Bharat campaign to end open defecation as one of the great privileges of her life.

Cancer and Campaigning

Many learned of mum's illness through an article published in The Guardian where she used her own terminal situation to highlight the human cost that austerity has had on the NHS. Publishing the article was bloody brave, but not out of character: the NHS was one of many causes she fought for outside of her work, alongside being a committed Labour & anti-Brexit campaigner. Her radical side was revatilized in the last few years, joining protests against Trump's 'muslim ban' and doing her part to contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement in July 2020. During what would be her last few months, she served on a sub-committee of SAGE and was a member of indepedent SAGE, advising the UK government on it's response to COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic.

Marching Orders

Although mum's ambition and drive cannot be replaced, her marching
orders were to ensure that the work to achieve global hygiene goals continues. We want this fund to be used to enable the next generation of global health leaders to take up the challenge and continue her legacy. Please consider donating!