American Nobel Prize-winning Scientist Professor Harold Elliot Varmus and founder of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), Dr Tore Godal visited MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM from the 19th to 21st April 2018. Professor Harold Elliot Varmus is a co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a Senior Associate at the New York Genome Center.

Similarly, Tore Godal is also well known for his leadership of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, starting with its foundation in 2000. At the time Gro Harlem Brundtland was appointed Director General of the World Health Organization and Godal served as a special advisor. Godal is highly applauded for his work in scaling up highly cost-effective health interventions, making vaccines available in low income settings.

During the course of their visit, they held seminar presentations at our main site in Fajara. Professor Harold Elliot Varmus presented on global health research and politics in science while Dr Tore Godal presented on vaccine development.

Poster presentations were done by PhD students from the three themes. Abdoulie Bodjan and Helen Brotherton presented for Disease Control and Elimination, Momodou Wurie Jallow and James Cross for Nutrition and Dr Olubukola Idoko and Penda Johm for Vaccine and Immunity. They were also taken on a tour of the Labs and Clinical Services Department.

This was a great opportunity for MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM to showcase our research and facilities.