Founded in 1924 as the Federal Department of Veterinary Research, the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), Vom on the Jos Plateau is one of the oldest continuously operating veterinary research stations in Africa. It holds Nigeria's mandate for the production of livestock and poultry vaccines and the diagnosis of animal diseases.
Its principal current vaccines: the I-2 thermostable Newcastle Disease vaccine for village poultry (produced under the Australian-developed I-2 strain, locally fermented and lyophilised — important because it tolerates cold-chain breaks of up to thirty days at ambient tropical temperatures); the T1/44 CBPP vaccine for cattle (the standard FAO-recommended product for sub-Saharan herds); the Anthrax Sterne 34F2 spore vaccine; and a suite of fowl-pox, fowl-typhoid, peste des petits ruminants (PPR) and African horse-sickness products.
Through the 1960s to 2011, NVRI was a primary producer of the rinderpest TCRV vaccine that contributed to the global eradication of rinderpest — only the second animal or human disease ever eradicated, after smallpox.
The institute's chronic problem is capital: cold-chain, fermenter capacity, and freeze-drying lines that need replacement every fifteen to twenty years. The vaccines continue to be made; the production volumes routinely fall short of demand, and Nigeria imports the gap — most visibly during the recurrent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreaks.