It was funded through a £300,000 grant from DFID with the objective of establishing a global public-private partnership to develop new vaccines against diseases that inflict the livestock of poor people.
[5] Following the brief inception phase, DFID provided GALV (later GALVmed) with core and project funding totalling UK£5.6 million during the period April 2005 to November 2011.
Of this total, £3 million was joint funding in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)for phase 1 of what is now known as the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed).
This change of name reflected the recognition by GALV/GALVmed’s management and board that although vaccines were important, the development of other types of veterinary medicines, including drugs, would also be relevant in some cases.
For these diseases, GALVmed and partners aimed to identify suitable mechanisms for the development of control tools (vaccines, diagnostics and pharmaceuticals) and to facilitate their access and adoption.
They also aimed to develop data-driven decision making tools and to communicate, network and support advocacy and global access strategy requirements of project delivery.
The focus for phase 2 was diseases that affect primarily the cattle, sheep, goats and chickens of poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
[11] In 2011, DFID awarded GALVmed an additional grant worth £8,010,708 to support the development of an integrated package of tools and policies and implement it as a cost effective control of animal African trypanosomosis (AAT).
[14] GALVmed is also part of the consortium awarded US$ 1.8 million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia BEN-1 Vaccine Evaluation project.
The project is exploring the potential efficacy of a vaccine to combat contagious bovine pleuropneumonia which is a major constraint to cattle production in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa where 18 countries are reported to be affected by this disease.
The board provides strategic oversight and is in turn overseen by Members who are drawn from a wide range of public bodies, private institutions including pharmaceutical companies, and non-governmental organisations.
GALVmed, in partnership with the NGO Heifer International Nepal, has established a vaccine supply system that has transformed backyard poultry keeping.
These have not only enabled them to pay their children’s school fees and meet medical bills, but have also empowered the women who report that they now enjoy more respect from their husbands.
Following a recent assessment of the project, the BMGF concluded that, “This is possibly the easiest, quickest and most economic way of reaching out to the poor of the world with visible results in helping alleviate poverty.”[9] In 2015, GALVmed announced it was to bring Newcastle disease vaccination to 100,000 backyard poultry farmers in the Mayurbhanj district of Orissa, India.
[22] University of Greenwich, Medway Centre for Pharmaceutical Science, UK: GALVmed is supporting research, development and testing of novel medications to treat AAT.
University of Melbourne, Australia and Indian Immunologicals Limited: A GALVmed supported work programme for porcine cysticercosis aims to provide the tools to be used in pigs that are needed to enable eradication of the disease.
A candidate vaccine, TSOL 18, identified by Professor Marshall Lightowlers, has been selected and work is now progressing on process development, scale up and validation, transfer to large-scale production, and preparation of a dossier and regulatory action.