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[Andrea Egan <egana@mail.nih.gov>]

Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Secretariat to move to Sweden in 2003
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Dear Colleagues,

The Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the National Institutes of 
Health (NIH) announces today that Stockholm University, Karolinska 
Institute, and the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control 
have been selected to serve as Secretariat of the Multilateral Ini-
tiative on Malaria (MIM) for 2003 to 2005. Since 1999 FIC has served 
as Secretariat of MIM, working in close cooperation with NIH's Na-
tional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Li-
brary of Medicine on behalf of MIM's sponsoring agencies. The trans-
fer of the MIM Secretariat will take place shortly after the Third 
MIM Pan-African Malaria Conference, which will be held in November 
2002 in Arusha, Tanzania.

As agreed when MIM was launched, the Secretariat rotates among spon-
soring agencies every three years. The Wellcome Trust served as the 
first MIM Secretariat. To ensure that the transfer of the MIM Secre-
tariat was conducted in a fair and transparent manner, the current 
MIM Secretariat developed a voting mechanism involving MIM's partners 
to decide which organization(s) would serve as the third MIM Secre-
tariat. A group of voting representatives composed of MIM's major 
partners, including NIH; The Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion; the United States Agency for International Development; the 
government research and development agencies of France, Germany, Ja-
pan, and Sweden; The World Bank; the World Health Organization; The 
Burroughs Wellcome Fund; The Wellcome Trust; and The Malaria Vaccine 
Initiative, as well as the African scientific institutions that have 
been most directly involved in MIM, reviewed the applications and 
voted to select the new MIM Secretariat. The voting members consisted 
of 10 funding partners from the North and 11 African countries repre-
senting 16 research institutions. These voting members were identi-
fied based on their significant and direct involvement with MIM, ei-
ther through major support of malaria conferences, workshops, and 
initiatives or through in-country activities.

"We are pleased to have had the opportunity to host the MIM Secre-
tariat since 1999 and to help shape its directions and activities 
during that time. We are equally delighted that the next MIM Secre-
tariat has been selected and that new perspectives and energies will 
be added to this critical enterprise," said Gerald T. Keusch, M.D., 
Director of MIM and of NIH's Fogarty International Center. He added, 
"The enormous burden of malaria and the disparity in global malaria 
research efforts is the rationale for MIM and the reason why U.S., 
European, Asian, South American, and African scientists have joined 
together in MIM to promote malaria research to develop new and im-
proved control interventions."

Doctor Andreas Heddini will act as coordinator for the Swedish MIM 
Secretariat. The board will include professors Marita Troye-Blomberg 
and Ingrid Faye as well as Mats Wahlgren, who will act as director. 
This means that special competence regarding both parasitology, mos-
quito research and immunology is represented within the executive 
group. Malaria researchers from other groups in Stockholm, Uppsala, 
Umeå and Göteborg, already collaborating as a malaria research net-
work, will also participate in activities organized by the MIM Secre-
tariat. The Swedish MIM Secretariat is sponsored by Swedish Interna-
tional Development Agency (SIDA), the Swedish Research Council, the 
Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, the Royal Swedish Academy 
of Sciences and the International Science Program.

For more information on the Swedish MIM Secretariat, please contact:

Andreas Heddini
Karolinska Institutet
Tel. +46-70-757-4562
mailto:andreas.heddini@mtc.ki.se

Ingrid Faye
Stockholms Universitet
Tel. +46-8-161-272
mailto:ingrid.faye@genetics.su.se

Marita Troye-Blomberg
Stockholms Universitet
Tel. +46-8-164-164
mailto:marita@imun.su.se

Mats Wahlgren
Karolinska Institutet
Tel. +46-8-728-7277,
mailto:mats.wahlgren@smi.ki.se


--
Andréa Egan, PhD
Coordinator
Multilateral Initiative on Malaria
Fogarty International Center
National Institutes of Health
31 Center Drive MSC 2220
Building 31, Room B2C39
Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Tel: +1-301-402-6680
Fax: +1-301-594-1211
mailto:egana@mail.nih.gov
http://mim.nih.gov

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