Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

A TRADITION OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN IMMUNOLOGY ELVIN A. KABAT* Substantial international cooperation in immunology and efforts to understand and prevent diseases in developing countries originated in the 1920s and 1930s, when the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation established chains ofcooperating laboratories in East and West Africa and South America. These labs did extraordinarily important work on the epidemiology and causative agents of various infectious diseases and isolated many viruses. The most outstanding accomplishment undoubtedly was the development of immunization against yellow fever. During the movements for independence after World War II, these labs, particularly in Africa, reduced their international efforts. A second major effort was mounted by the World Health Organization in 1963, when it sponsored conferences of five scientific groups under the leadership of Niels Jeme that recommended the establishment of research and training centers in immunology in developing countries. There was extensive cooperation among all countries, including the USSR and Czechoslovakia, despite many ideological differences. Howard Goodman and Zdenek Trnka were selected to run the program , and they and I traveled around Africa and selected Ibadan as the first center. In the next few years centers were set up in Säo Paulo, Singapore, Mexico City, and Nairobi, and later in Beirut, Teheran, and New Delhi, with support centers in Lausanne and Geneva. Dr. Vasek Houba set up the center at Nairobi. Dr. Otto Bier, for many years the director of the Säo Paulo Center, was succeeded by Ivan Mota. In recent years Dr. Georgio Torrigiani has assumed leadership of the program. *National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20205; Professor of Microbiology, Human Genetics, and Development , Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York 10032.© 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/86/2932/$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 29, 3, Part 2 ¦ Spring 1986 \ S159 The activities of each center depended largely on the interests and problems of the respective region and the personnel available. The general plan was for each center to give a course in immunology and immunochemistry for students coming from various countries in the region. These courses, which varied in length from 2 to 8 months, were sometimes followed by opportunities to participate in research. Some centers were staffed by one or two persons sent by WHO; others were staffed by immunologists already active in the area. Up to the end of the 1970s the centers functioned quite successfully. Later, however, they tended to draw students largely from the country in which the center was located, and often areas of scientific interest became restricted . Some countries, such as Thailand, developed immunological groups of their own. The centers, as Torrigiani recently wrote me, served a very useful function, but WHO has been finding it difficult to continue to support them. In the early 1970s the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, and a consortium of the Agency for International Development and its equivalents in various countries made plans to set up a modern laboratory. The International Laboratory for Animal Diseases (ILRAD) in Nairobi was dedicated in April 1978. It is an extremely well-supported, wellequipped facility for the purpose of developing vaccines against East Coast fever and trypanosomiasis. A young, well-trained group of about 25 immunologists and molecular biologists were assembled, and research is being carried out with the most modern tools. The NIH, as Wyngaarden pointed out, has over several decades also carried out cooperative programs with developing countries and supported American universities in establishing close relationships for research with universities in developing countries. Despite limitations and problems, this is an essential activity which must go forward. ADDITIONAL READING Shaplen, R. Toward the Well-Being ofMankind: Fifty Years ofthe Rockefeller Foundation . New York: Doubleday, 1964. Strode, G. K. Yellow Fever. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951. World Health Organization. Technical report series no. 315. Immunology and parasitic diseases report of a WHO expert committee, Ibadan, Nigeria, Dec. 8-15, 1964. Geneva: WHO, 1965. World Health Organization. Technical report series no. 496. Clinical immunology . Report of a WHO scientific group. Geneva: WHO, 1972. S160 I Elvin A. Kabat ¦ Cooperation in Immunology ...