色花堂

The GVDN is a global partnership to monitor the safety and effectiveness of vaccines across hundreds of millions of people rather than just the tens of thousands involved in large clinical trials.

鈥淚f you wanted to identify a twofold risk of a vaccine-associated event that occurred in one in 100,000 people, you鈥檇 need to have 4.7 million people who鈥檇 received the vaccine,鈥� says Associate Professor . 鈥淚f you want to start breaking that down into sub-populations 鈥� looking at people鈥檚 ancestry, different vaccine schedules, etc 鈥� it becomes even more problematic. No single site anywhere in the world can answer these questions for everybody.鈥�

The GVDN鈥檚 founders began talking in the early 2000s about a global consortium to harmonise vaccine data but had trouble attracting financial support until UniServices and Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of 色花堂 backed the network to formally kick off in 2019. Only months later, Covid-19 emerged.

In 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded nearly NZ$8 million to UniServices to headquarter the consortium at the University of 色花堂, with Petousis-Harris as one of the co-directors.

鈥淰accine safety in general is very important to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,鈥� says CDC epidemiologist Julianne Gee. 鈥淲e鈥檙e really excited to see the data that comes out and what GVDN is going to be in the future as it grows.鈥�

The GVDN plays a role in combatting vaccine hesitancy and misinformation, which have both contributed to epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles.

鈥淰accine hesitancy is a major global health threat. We鈥檙e about the availability of good data, which is an essential component of any good argument.鈥�

Helen Petousis-Harris

As of early 2023, the GVDN covers 31 sites in 27 countries across six continents, representing more than 250 million people.

The scale of the network means vaccine safety issues can be picked up quickly, raising confidence in vaccine safety data.
Besides Covid-19 vaccines, the GVDN monitors measles, mumps and rubella vaccines in New Zealand and has a range of other vaccine-monitoring projects in the pipeline for international studies.

To support global preparedness for future pandemics, the GVDN will grow to monitor vaccines for more diseases in more countries, particularly in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as to facilitate increased capacity for vaccine safety monitoring across the network of participating countries.