Donor Spotlight: The Norwegian Government

Site visit to Kenya in 2017; at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Nairobi, with Ambassador Victor Rønneberg, representatives of the Norwegian, Dutch, and Danish governments, and the IAVI team. Photo credit: IAVI

IAVI recognizes the Norwegian government and its Norwegian Development Agency (Norad) for its continued commitment to HIV vaccine research and applauds its dedication to global health research and development. Global health is a prioritized area within Norwegian development policy, built on a premise to promote and respect fundamental human rights and ensuring equal access to health services based on strong, sustainable, and nationally owned health systems. Key priorities within global health are women, children, and adolescents’ health; sexual and reproductive health and rights; and epidemics of HIV, TB, malaria, hepatitis, neglected tropical diseases, and other communicable diseases.

The Norwegian government has been a longstanding supporter of IAVI’s mission and work. Between 2001 and 2015, Norad generously provided IAVI flexible funding for HIV vaccine research (nearly US$30 million) through its support of international product development partnerships. As a founder of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil organizations founded in Davos in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics, Norway’s investment and leadership in CEPI continues to fuel work by IAVI and partners to solve other pressing public health challenges as part of a global health security agenda. In 2018, IAVI announced a partnership with CEPI to support the development of IAVI’s replicating viral vector-based Lassa fever vaccine candidate, rVSVΔG-LASV-GPC. CEPI is supporting the first phase of the project, with options to invest in additional stages over five years, based on previous findings that the vaccine induced strong immune responses and was highly efficacious in animal models.

Most recently, IAVI has received funding through the Research Council of Norway funded Global Health and Vaccination Research (GLOBVAC) program for its innovative development of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) as HIV prevention products for women and girls in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Teams on three continents will work to engineer and optimize antibodies to extend their half-life, an improvement designed to increase the duration of antibody activity and potentially lead to longer intervals between protective doses. These improvements could lead to lower costs and make this HIV prevention technology more affordable and accessible for people in LMICs. The consortium led by the University of Oslo received a research grant of about US$2.2M for a period of three years.

IAVI is grateful for the longstanding support of the Norwegian government and proud to continue to work together to develop health technologies to combat HIV/AIDS and emerging infectious diseases, strengthen research capacity in Africa, and improve the health of women, girls, and other communities most impacted by infectious diseases. Learn more about IAVI’s generous funders.