Moira Walker Memorial Award for International Service
This Award honors an individual or group that has demonstrated extraordinary efforts to bring about change or improvement related to infection prevention and control in parts of the world that are under developed or under resourced. The annual award is in honour of Moira Walker RN CIC, a Past President of IPAC Canada and Past Honourary Secretary of the International Federation of Infection Control. Moira’s life was dedicated to enhancing the physical and spiritual health of her many friends and colleagues.
Nomination Deadline is March 31st each year.
Past winners of the Moira Walker Memorial Award for International Service
- 2012 Yasmine Chagla
- 2013 Natalie Bridger, Brenda Earles
- 2014 Sandra Callery
- 2015 Donna Moralejo
- 2016 Shirley McDonald, Sally MacInnis
- 2017 Paul Webber
- 2018 Barbara Catt and Zahir Hirji
- 2019 Mandy Deeves
- 2020 No award presented
- 2021 Pierre Plourde
- 2023 Alicia Cortright
2025 Moira Walker Award Winner Vicky Willet
Vicky Willet, recipient of the 2025 Award, is a testament to the ideals demonstrated by Moira Walker. Her nominators, IPAC Northeastern Ontario, summarized her achievements:
In 2014 and 2015, Vicky joined the WHO Ebola Response as an IPC consultant, working in Sierra Leone for three months. Vicky and her team developed and delivered the first ever Ebola training for IPC professionals in Sierra Leone.
In early 2019, she spent three months with Medecins sans frontieres supporting IPC at a new maternal-child hospital near Kenema in Sierra Leone. Vicky developed an Ebola management curriculum, delivering the 5-day workshop to IPC leads in South Sudan. This training was subsequently deployed by WHO in response to numerous outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg.
From May of 2020 until present, Vicky has worked for WHO in the Health Emergencies division. Over the past five years, Vicky has contributed technical expertise on numerous internationally important WHO guidance documents, the development of training materials that are published on OPENWHO, and coordinated communication material about IPC, collaborating with organizations such as UNICEF and GOARN (the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network), among others.
From COVID-19, across outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg viruses (including deployment to Uganda), and more recently developing tools and coordinating IPC activities as part of the response to Mpox, including leading the development of the first WHO guideline in 2022 and its revision in 2024, Vicky has been on the front line of emerging infectious diseases.
This story punctuates the success of the sustained efforts of our international IPC work and contributions to countries around the world being able to implement IPC with support of colleagues like Vicky Willett.