Judicial police have raided the offices of the Bandim Health Project and seized vaccine doses as officials seek clarity over a controversial trial involving newborns.
Judicial police in Guinea-Bissau have raided the offices of a controversial vaccine research team and seized hepatitis B doses, intensifying a row over a trial that has drawn praise from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and criticism from public health experts. According to officials posting on Facebook, the search was intended to clarify the circumstances around the vaccine batch, while the authorities said the seizure did not indicate any problem with the shots’ quality, safety or effectiveness.
The researchers at the centre of the dispute are linked to the Bandim Health Project, a long-running research programme founded by anthropologist Peter Aaby and now co-led by epidemiologist Christine Stabell Benn. The study has received $1.6 million from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with matching support from the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation, bringing the total to $3.2 million.
The controversy has focused on whether the trial would withhold hepatitis B vaccination from newborns in a country where about one in five adults carries the virus. In Guinea-Bissau, hepatitis B can be especially dangerous for infants, and experts say vaccination within 24 hours of birth is both safe and highly effective. The World Health Organisation has said a study that denies the vaccine to participants would be unethical and could expose newborns to serious, potentially irreversible harm.
The Guardian reported earlier this month that the trial had been approved to move forward, after being redesigned over the summer. But Quinhin Nantote, health minister in Guinea-Bissau’s transitional government, rejected suggestions that the study would proceed, telling the newspaper: “This is not even remotely true.” The Bandim group had also recently posted what it said was approval from Guinea-Bissau’s national ethics committee, and a Danish research ethics committee also cleared the study after changing its rules to review a clinical trial.
Kennedy has repeatedly championed the researchers’ work. At an anti-vaccine conference, he called them “the deities of vaccine research”, according to The Guardian, and he has cited Aaby’s findings in public remarks, including on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2023. Stabell Benn has also been involved in US vaccine policy discussions, serving on the hepatitis B working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices before a federal judge paused changes to the universal birth recommendation.
The dispute comes amid wider concern about the setting for the research. A report from the non-profit Stand Up for Science said the Bandim organisation is deeply embedded in Guinea-Bissau but has done little to strengthen the country’s health and research capacity over five decades. Colette Delawalla, who founded the group, said her investigator found significant public distrust of Bandim, even as local health infrastructure remains too weak to offer many alternatives. She also described Guinea-Bissau as a fragile state still grappling with the instability left by a military coup less than a year ago.
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