MAHABA (Managing Animal Health and Acaricides for a Better Africa) is a 5-year initiative to manage ticks and tick-borne diseases in Africa.

The project will develop and implement an effective and practical strategy to control tick infestations in cattle, and will equip small-scale producers in Uganda and Nigeria with the necessary tools (acaricides) and knowledge (through an innovative digital platform) to realize significant livestock productivity gains.

MAHABA is a project in collaboration with Elanco Animal Health, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

TAHSSL – Transforming Animal-Health Solutions and Services for Low-and middle-income countries (LMIC), is a platform that focuses on developing veterinary medicines and diagnostics solutions to address the burdens of diseases in LMIC.

The purpose of the platform is to be a “one-stop-shop” that will develop technological solutions and offer laboratory, clinical and market development services in a manner that will attract customers (especially the private sector) and stakeholders. TAHSSL initially focuses on the following diseases: African swine fever (ASF), contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), contagious caprine pleuropneumonia (CCPP), East Coast fever (ECF), ticks and tick-borne diseases (anaplasmosis, heartwater and babesiosis).

TAHSSL is a joint initiative between the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Clinglobal, and GALVmed. Core funding for establishing TAHSSL has been provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Outcomes of Phase I (June 2021 – March 2022):

• Establishment of the organizational and operational framework for the TAHSSL platform.
• Restructure of ILRI’s animal health product development division and infra-structure to conduct research at good clinical practice (GCP) standards, a trilateral (EU-Japan-USA) program aimed at harmonizing technical requirements for veterinary product registration.
• Key set of 7 activities commissioned (3 laboratory and 4 desk-top) to demonstrate functionality of the platform and to identify future areas of priority.

Phase II (April 2022)

The focus of the platform in the second Phase is to conduct high quality testing of new or improved animal health products (including diagnostic tests, pharmaceutical products, and vaccines) and partner with animal health companies to enable registration, commercialization, and use.

The PREVENT project (PRomoting and Enabling Vaccination Efficiently, Now and Tomorrow), is a 4-year initiative that aims to improve the efficiency and sustainability of small-scale poultry production in Sub-Saharan Africa.

PREVENT works with medium-sized hatcheries spread across eight Africa countries to provide high-quality, vaccinated day-old chicks to small-scale livestock producers (SSPs) together with practical advice and guidance from a team of field technicians.

One of the project objectives is to be gender intentional by understanding gender dynamics in the small-scale poultry sector and evaluating what happens when poultry production intensifies.

The PREVENT project is a partnership between Ceva Santé Animale (a global veterinary health company) and GALVmed, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The AgResults Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Challenge Project is an initiative designed to support the development, registration and uptake of high-quality FMD vaccines, tailored to meet the needs of Eastern Africa.

The project will contribute to the cost-per-dose paid to the competing vaccine manufacturers, thereby encouraging government and private sector actors to better combat FMD by consistently purchasing high-quality vaccines. To build a stable market around FMD control, the project will promote the development of a private sector model for buying and distributing vaccines, while enhancing existing public sector control efforts. In this way, the project encourages the widespread use of prophylactic vaccination to improve animal health and farmer livelihoods.

In many African countries, small-scale livestock producers (SSPs) have limited or no access to high quality veterinary medical products as well as services. Consequently, economic losses for animal diseases are very high and negatively impact SSPs’ livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The main objective of the LastMile project, an initiative implemented in partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), is to facilitate BI’s expansion into the African market and thereby afford small-scale livestock producers with an improved portfolio of animal health inputs. LastMile will also deploy teams of animal health technicians in each of the 6 targeted markets (Kenya, Cameroon, Mali, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria) to address the low levels of awareness about animal diseases and prevention/treatment.

VITAL, a six-year programme co-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gaters Foundation and the UK Government (FCDO), builds on the work of GALVmed’s previous PLSHL1 and PLSHL2 programmes (similarly co-funded by BMGF and FCDO). In progressing this work, VITAL reflects key learnings from these programmes including:

• Partnering with the larger multinational private sector partners in the animal health industry.
• A greater focus on multi-valent vaccine development. This reflecting a syndromic approach, where appropriate, by offering pragmatic and cost-effective disease control tools for the small-scale livestock producers.
• In market development, a greater focus on demonstrating and proving the underlying business case of distribution networks. This ensures small-scale focused business models that are subsequently capable of autonomous replication and scale-up by the private sector partners (continued growth that can be achieved without further donor funding).
• A shift in emphasis on policy work to be undertaken in direct support of VITAL projects, as opposed to stand-alone initiatives.

Underpinning everything in VITAL is a focus on the small-scale livestock producers, their needs and the products and market processes that can make a material and sustainable difference to their livelihoods. Effective new livestock vaccines on the market and large-scale commercial distribution networks selling these and other essential animal health products to tens of millions of small-scale producers is the long-term vision for VITAL.

The AgResults Brucellosis Vaccine Prize is a US $30 million global competition, which invites animal health innovators (‘Solvers’) to submit their proposals for – and ultimately develop – a suitable vaccine that is efficacious, safe and viable for use against Brucella melitensis a pathogen causing Brucellosis that particularly affects small-scale livestock producers in the developing world. The competition is funded by AgResults, a collaborative initiative between the governments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an effort to find innovative solutions from the private sector to seemingly intractable development challenges. The competition, which could last up to twelve years, is managed and implemented by the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed).

Animal health, biotech and vaccine companies and other organisations are invited to submit their proposals via the Brucellosis Vaccine Prize Competition website.

Current vaccines are not ideal for use in developing countries, as they are unsafe for use in pregnant animals, can harm humans, and have variable efficacy. A new vaccine that addresses these shortcomings would deliver lasting benefits to livestock health and improve small-scale livestock producers’ livelihoods.

This was a multi-disciplinary collaboration between GALVmed, the Malawi-based Centre for Tick and Tick-Borne Diseases and Arecor Ltd, a UK biotech company that develops novel formulations for the human health medical sector.

This partnership provided a unique opportunity to translate British technology and expertise from the human health sector into livestock disease control in the developing world context. The programme focused on East Coast Fever, which kills over a million cattle per year and has a devastating effect on small-scale cattle production in East, Central and Southern Africa.

An effective vaccine, ECF-ITM, currently exists for the disease but it has a number of important drawbacks that affect its use in the field. This project trialled the use of novel formulations as a replacement for the ECF-ITM vaccine diluent.

A programme led by the Chinese Harbin Veterinary Research Institute. Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia is a disease of cattle that continues to afflict substantial losses in Africa, but which has been eradicated in many other parts of the world. In China, the disease was eradicated following the use of the BEN-1 vaccine. Under this programme, the Chinese-developed BEN-1 vaccine was evaluated for safety and efficacy in African conditions.

The objectives of this programme were:

• Production of two types of experimental CBPP Ben-1 vaccine batches in Africa for preliminary safety and efficacy evaluation in African cattle.
• Evaluate the ability of the Ben-1 vaccine to act as a highly effective and safe CBPP vaccine that meets target product profile and that is a pivotal enabler for the Control and then possibly eradication of the disease in Africa.
• Compare the immune responses between protected and non-protected animals to reveal correlates of immunity for identification of protective immune responses and Mycoplasma molecules that induce protective immune responses.

Overall, the first two objectives were achieved. The project showed that a Ben-1 vaccine produced according to the method used in China to control CBPP had some efficacy against a virulent African strain of CBPP, but it was not as good as a live attenuated commercial T1/44 vaccine and it failed to prevent mortality. Although the programme did not achieve the overall outcome to document the correlates of immunity for identification of protective immune responses, the work of the consortium of key organisations assembled for the project identified useful analytical tools and materials that could provide further insights into protective immune responses. Lastly, the programme also identified new techniques that could improve vaccine quality and that could lead to indirect benefits to the efficacy and duration of live CBPP vaccines.

This is a  three-phase programme of work addressing the lack of disease control tools available to small-scale livestock producers in sub-Saharan Africa.  Animal African Trypanosomosis is a parasitic disease that is often fatal to cattle, sheep and goats in Africa, causing serious economic losses in livestock.  

Work focuses on developing a new therapeutic product to overcome issues with developing resistance in the parasite. Mass screening of candidate molecules carried out during Tryps 1 and Tryps 2 programmes (2011-2014, 2014-2019 respectively) delivered a target molecule for a drug product. Tryps 3 builds on the work of programmes 1 and 2 and will deliver a registered therapeutic product ready for marketing by a commercial partner.  

For more information, please visit our Product Development page.

Many African countries have their own national laboratories for the production and supply of veterinary vaccines. This programme improved the technical capabilities of eight national laboratories in the production of four key livestock vaccines. Through the provision of improved equipment and associated training in systems and processes a substantially enhanced output in terms of quality and volume was achieved.

A substantial and multi-faceted programme of work separated into two workstreams. The product development workstream focused on developing 9 to 11 new products (primarily veterinary vaccines but also pharmaceuticals and diagnostics) and various product improvements (such as heat tolerance, production cost reductions, formulations for easy applications etc.).

The market development workstream focused on developing sustainable access to these products, which was mainly centred around Newcastle Disease and East Coast Fever vaccines.

In direct support of these product and market development elements, there was a wide range of policy and advocacy issues, for example, facilitating a harmonised veterinary vaccination framework in the East Africa region.