In the News

President's Perspective

January 30, 2009

Welcome to the new website of the Sabin Vaccine Institute. Since its founding in 1993 our organization has been committed to reducing the suffering caused by preventable infectious and tropical diseases, and honoring the legacy of Dr. Albert B. Sabin, the discoverer of the oral polio vaccine as well as several other life-saving interventions.

Dr. Sabin once stated that “a scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might reduce suffering rests on the shelf.”

Today, in that spirit of science in the pursuit of humanitarian goals, the Sabin Vaccine Institute is advancing almost a dozen major projects with an important global public health emphasis. They include the research and development for new recombinant vaccines to combat important parasitic infections such as human hookworm infection and schistosomiasis, which together afflict hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people living in the under developed regions of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and tropical regions of the Americas, as well as advocacy and innovative financing mechanisms to increase immunization coverage for childhood killer diseases such as pneumoccal pneumonia, rotavirus gastroenteritis, whooping cough and rubella. Sabin also serves as the advocacy and resource-mobilization headquarters for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, an alliance of major public private partnerships working to provide “the bottom billion” (the world’s poorest people living on less than $1.25 per day) with access to essential medicines to combat their most common infections. Virtually almost all of the bottom billion are afflicted with one or more NTDs, which include intestinal worm infections, river blindness, elephantiasis, and trachoma, just to name a few.

To carry out its mission, our interdisciplinary team of scientists, physicians, and global health advocates conduct their work in collaboration with major scientific and international health organizations, and with governments and political leaders in order to champion health for all people as a means for achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals for sustainable poverty reduction.

We look forward to your feedback on our new website and hope that you find it both educational and as a source of inspiration.

Peter Hotez MD PhD