Madagascar Institute for Vaccine Research

MIVR hosts the following programs:

COVID-19 Research in African Settings (COVIA)

In response to the disproportionate lack of disease burden data in low- and middle- income countries, COVIA aims to support local institutions in Madagascar and Burkina Faso to detect COVID-19 cases by implementing health care facility-based disease surveillance, vaccine hesitancy surveys, and the study of febrile samples collected in typhoid programs. In Madagascar, COVIA is operating in health clinics across three rural districts of Antananarivo. COVIA is supported by funding from Sweden’s Sida.

Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine Introduction in Africa program (THECA)

THECA is a consortium led by the University of Cambridge Department of Medicine and funded by a €13 million grant from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP). THECA includes a cluster-randomized trial in Agogo, Ghana and a mass vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo using the Typbar-TCV (Vi-TT) typhoid conjugate vaccine. From 2019-2023, this project assessed the safety, feasibility and cost-effectiveness of Vi-TT and its
ability to limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Severe Typhoid in Africa (SETA) Plus

SETA Plus is a continuation of IVI’s typhoid surveillance programs in Africa, which began in 2010 with the Typhoid Fever Surveillance in Africa Program (TSAP) and continued from 2015 with the SETA program, a multi-country surveillance study to understand the burden of severe typhoid fever and the associated case fatalities, clinical characteristics, and potential host risk factors that may be related to the disease severity.

Vaccines Against Schistosomiasis for Africa (VASA)

IVI is leading the development of a safe and effective vaccine through the Vaccine Against Schistosomiasis for Africa (VASA) project, a collaboration through a consortium of ten research institutes around the world. The project includes a disease burden study in Madagascar and Burkina Faso—two schistosomiasis-endemic countries—as well as a cost-of-illness study to estimate the cost-effectiveness of a vaccine. The project also includes a phase 1b clinical trial of SchistoShield® vaccine in Burkina Faso and Madagascar as well as a phase 2a trial of the vaccine in Madagascar.