South Korea-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana, Africa have opened the KNUST-IVI Collaborating Centre during a ceremony that took place at KNUST/Agogo Presbyterian Hospital in Ghana.

The KNUST-IVI Collaborating Centre will be a research and training site to implement ongoing and new collaborative projects, including disease surveillance, vaccine clinical development, vaccination campaigns, and vaccine effectiveness and health economics studies for infectious diseases prevalent to the region such as typhoid and invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella.

The KNUST-IVI Collaborating Centre is the first of its kind, initiated by IVI to enable joint research, development, and capacity-building activities to achieve regional health objectives as well as the UN’s global goals.

Both parties are also beginning a mass vaccination campaign as consortium members of the Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine Introduction in Africa (THECA) program, which aims to assess the effectiveness of a typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) through two clinical studies, including a cluster-randomized trial in Ghana, to support the introduction of TCV into routine immunization programs in typhoid-endemic countries in Africa.