Guinea-Bissau police raid offices of vaccine researchers praised by US health secretary Kennedy

Judicial police in Guinea-Bissau on Monday, 20 October, searched the offices of the Bandim Health Project in the West African country and seized doses of hepatitis B vaccine. The project's researchers are at the centre of a dispute over a planned study on newborns, and have been praised by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. Officials announced the search in a Facebook post.

According to the post, translated from Portuguese, the procedures were aimed at clarifying the circumstances surrounding the batch of vaccines in question. Officials stressed that seizing the doses did not indicate any irregularities in the vaccines' quality, safety or effectiveness.

The dispute over the study

The research is backed by $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation, for a total of $3.2m. Redesigned over the summer, it would still withhold hepatitis B vaccines from 7,000 newborns during their first six weeks of life, in a country where about one in five adults has the virus. Hepatitis B kills 15% to 25% of people with chronic infections, causing cancer and liver failure, while vaccination within 24 hours of birth is safe and highly effective.

Bandim recently published an approval letter from the national ethics committee dated 14 July, and a Danish research ethics committee approved the study earlier this month. However, Quinhin Nantote, health minister of Guinea-Bissau's transitional government, told the Guardian reports that the trial would proceed were "not even remotely true".

Tarik Jašarević, a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson, called any study denying the vaccine unethical and harmful to newborns, describing birth-dose vaccination as an essential public health intervention.

Project leaders and criticism

Bandim was founded in 1978 by anthropologist Peter Aaby and is now co-led by his wife, epidemiologist Christine Stabell Benn. Kennedy has called them "the deities of vaccine research". Stabell Benn was a member of the hepatitis B working group of the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The researchers did not respond to the Guardian's questions.

Colette Delawalla, founder of the non-profit Stand Up for Science, said Bandim is deeply embedded in the country but distrusted by citizens, though often the only option for medical care. She said the country, which had a military coup less than a year ago, lacks the stability needed for clinical trials.