The IVI Board of Trustees meeting at the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) in Kolkata, India, on March 6, 2007. The Board met in the Indian city to acknowledge the successful collaboration between IVI and NICED.

IVI held its annual meeting of the Board of Trustees (BOT) at the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) in Kolkata, India from March 6-8.

The Board met in Kolkata to acknowledge the successful collaboration between IVI and NICED, one of the world’s great diarrheal disease research centers. Over the past four years IVI and NICED scientists have worked together in impoverished areas of Kolkata on several important projects to accelerate the introduction of new typhoid and cholera vaccines.

The IVI Board meeting in Kolkata featured a Special Seminar commemorating the IVI’s 10th anniversary and the achievements from the IVI-NICED collaboration. IVI hosted the public seminar, entitled “New Vaccines for Improving Health and Economic Development in Developing Countries", in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and NICED to inform the public health and vaccine science communities in India about its activities to accelerate the development and deployment of new vaccines. More than 50 scientists and health professionals from India attended the seminar.

At the meeting, the Board also officially ratified two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Spain, as new Signatories to the IVI charter. This brings the number of Signatories of the IVI to 40, including the World Health Organization.

In Kolkata, IVI and NICED have created a field site of over 100,000 residents for population-based studies, as part of IVI’s Diseases of the Most Impoverished (DOMI) Program, a research program supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Two major vaccine trials have been conducted recently at the IVI-NICED field site: an effectiveness trial of typhoid Vi vaccine in 38,000 individuals, and a Phase III double-blinded, randomized controlled trial of an oral killed cholera vaccine in 70,000 individuals.

Besides the field evaluations of these vaccines, IVI and NICED have also conducted socio-behavioral, epidemiologic and economic studies aimed at providing evidence to policy makers about the magnitude of these diseases, their economic consequences and the effectiveness of current methods for their prevention and control. (Learn more)

Dr. SK Bhattacharya, Director of NICED, said “The collaborative work between NICED and the IVI is critical to assure that evidence-based decisions about whether to introduce typhoid and cholera vaccines into the public health arena are made.”

IVI Director-General Dr. Clemens commented “The legacy of this work will extend beyond our current research on cholera and typhoid vaccines,” adding that “This study site is already being considered for future studies for several other vaccines.”