Partners

The Global Snakebite Initiative Limited (GSI) is a registered non-profit, charitable organisation, based in Australia, but with global membership, and established to provide a collaborative framework to address the neglected global tragedy of snakebite envenoming. Snakebite envenoming is a particularly cruel misery inflicted on many of the most impoverished, mostly rural, populations throughout the world, particularly in the tropics. Each year, thousands of snakebite victims die, or are permanently maimed, because of a lack of effective treatments – treatments that are readily available in wealthy countries.

The International Society on Toxinology was founded in 1962 by a group on scientists and clinicians interested in advancing the science of toxinology. The Society had it's first international meeting in 1966 in Atlantic City, USA and it's Journal, Toxicon, was first published in 1963. The purpose of the Society is to advance knowledge on the properties of toxins and antitoxins and to bring together scholars interested in these substances through a common Society. Membership consists of those who have conducted and published meritorious original investigations in toxinology, while persons who do not qualify for membership but are interested in the field of toxinology are eligible for associate membership.

We are establishing a Snakebite Research and Intervention Centre in Kenya that will (i) provide accurate disease burden data, (ii) establish preclinical antivenom efficacy-testing facilities, (ii) establish national clinical guidelines for the effective management of snakebite, (iii) instigate a motorcycle ambulance system, (iv) establish student/scholar exchange programs and (v) develop effective advocacy. This novel, holistic project will achieve its medical, capacity strengthening, educational and advocacy objectives as an exemplar of a system that could be adopted throughout sub-Saharan Africa to reduce the continents high levels of snakebite-induced death and diasability.

We are the National Institute for Health Research. We fund health and care research and translate discoveries into practical products, treatments, devices and procedures, involving patients and the public in all our work. We ensure the NHS is able to support the research of other funders to encourage broader investment in, and economic growth from, health research. We work with charities and the life sciences industry to help patients gain earlier access to breakthrough treatments and we train and develop researchers to keep the nation at the forefront of international research.

The idea to start a primate research centre in Kenya was mooted in 1958 when Dr. LSB Leakey was visiting Ghana. He found that his friend, Dr. Alan Angus Booth, had died very suddenly after about nine years of primate research work in Ghana, which he had carried out jointly with his wife, Cynthia Booth. Both of them had been known to LSB Dr. LSB Leakey for a long time, and both were very highly qualified Cambridge University graduates in Biology and Animal Behavior. Dr. LSB Leakey enquired of Cynthia what she planned to do now that her husband had died, and she said that she would finish off the publication of their latest joint report, and wind current research, and then she would wish to leave Ghana. After pondering the matter for 24 hours, LSB suggested the next day that she should come and continue research on monkeys with a base somewhere near Nairobi. Accordingly, at the end of 1958 she arrived in Kenya, and the Tigoni Primate Research Centre came into existence.