an Eldis Resource
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI): is it getting new science and technology to the world's neglected majority?
Innovative approaches to PPPs: the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and bridging the technology gap
Authors:
J. Chataway; J. Smith
Publisher:
Elsevier Science, 2006
Product based public–private partnerships (PPPs), of which the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is one, are being developed to try and bridge the gap between scienti?c and technological potential and the needs of developing countries. First, this paper examines PPP’s popularity. Second, it describes key characteristics of IAVI and explains why it di?ers from more traditional partnerships. Third, IAVI has had some success in bringing new science and technology closer to the world’s poor and we look at how it has achieved this success and implications for theoretical and practical approaches to science and technology capacity building.
The article argues that PPPs are the key emergent theme in the delivery of global publics goods. While the market is deemed to have failed to distribute the health services and products that people need, partnerships between public and private institutions are often proposed as an innovative method to reconnect and reorient supply and demand. PPPs are becoming increasingly high profile as reflected in the amount of funds that flow into partnership-led enterprises such as IAVI.
It also suggests that not only are PPPs becoming more pervasive, the types of partnerships being adopted are also changing. There has been a steady shift away frm a geopolitical perspective imbued with a particular set of historical underpinnings, to a series of partnerships that focus on specific sectors such as vaccine provision or family planning.
The article states that the logic of IAVI is rooted in the practice of science and in the politics and practice of particular areas of science as much as it is rooted in a particular moment in ideological and economic thinking. According to the article, the IAVI appears to represent a new type of PPP. It operates with high degrees of autonomy from multi-lateral UN institutions and is focused on its mission of development and delivery of a vaccine.
The article argues that through its awareness and advocacy and its capacity building activities, it is having some success in bringing new science and technology closer to the poor.
In this paper, it has been argued that although it has not yet achieved a vaccine, IAVI’s expenditure of large amounts of money in a relatively short time period has had development pay o?s and has helped in the larger mission of making new science and technology work for the majority of the world’s population.
