Winner of the RRI Personality of the Year 2021
Radio Romania International once again held its traditional end-of-year poll in which listeners and Internet and social media users get to choose the person or persons who had the greatest positive impact on the world.
România Internațional, 01.01.2022, 16:35
Radio Romania International once again held its traditional end-of-year poll in which listeners and Internet and social media users get to choose the person or persons who had the greatest positive impact on the world.
This year healthcare workers from around the world working on the front line in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, together with all those who helped develop vaccines against Covid-19 were chosen as Persons of the Year, with special mentions going to the German doctors and founders of the BioNTech labs Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, and the Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who contributed to the development of the mRNA technology on which some of the Covid vaccines are based.
Other proposals included the journalists and presenters who have been providing accurate information since the start of the pandemic, as well as Dr Annalisa Malara, who diagnosed the first Covid-19 case in Italy, and Dr Marco Stabile, whose discovery that heparin helps prevent blood clots has saved many lives.
The politicians put forward for Personality of the Year included the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US President Joe Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the Romanian Ambassador to Italy George Bologan, who is just finishing his term. The COP26 summit on climate change was also nominated.
Yet more proposals for Personality of the Year included the American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, the young tennis sensation Emma Raducanu, the Auvergne pour un enfant humanitarian association, the Somalese YouTuber AboFlah, the Algerian national football team, who won the 2021 Arab Cup, and the doctors who saved the Danish football player Christian Eriksen, who suffered a heart attack on the pitch last June.
