大象传媒

The World Health Organization is honouring an African-American woman who has played a crucial role in medical history but whose name is largely unknown and unrecognised. Her name is Henrietta Lacks and she died in Baltimore in 1951 of cervical cancer.

Samples of her cancer cells were collected by doctors without her or her family's knowledge or consent. These became the first living human cells ever to survive and multiply outside the body. This remarkable characteristic led to a series of crucial medical breakthroughs over the past 70 years.

Newshour's James Menendez has been speaking to two members of the Lacks family who have travelled to the WHO headquarters for the ceremony to honour Henrietta Lacks: Alfred Lacks Carter is a grandson of Henrietta and Victoria Baptiste is her great granddaughter and a nurse.

(Image: Henrietta Lacks. Credit: Getty Images)