Founded in 1979, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research is one of Africa’s leading biomedical research institutions. It is made up of 280 staff members and divided into nine major departments: animal experimentation, bacteriology, clinical pathology, electron microscopy and histopathology, epidemiology, immunology, nutrition, parasitology, and virology.  The institute focuses primarily on research into infectious diseases such as malaria, soil-transmitted helminthiasis and schistosomiasis, filariasis (lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis), HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, buruli ulcer, poliomyelitis, sexually transmitted infections, viral hemorrhagic fevers, diarrheal diseases, and vaccine-preventable diseases.

NMIMR recently provided key technical assistance to fight malaria and organized international training programs to help eliminate lymphatic filariasis and parasitic diseases such as guinea worm. In the past year, the institute also worked to build capacity for diagnosis of avian influenza and expanded its research into noncommunicable conditions such as heart disease and cancer.  It is currently expanding its research into noninfectious diseases and other issues of public health importance such as diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, micronutrients, infant and maternal mortality, sickle cell disease, cancer plant medicine, allergies, and environmental pollution. 

The institute also conducts clinical trials (including on vaccines for malaria and rotavirus) and preclinical studies on drug products that involve in vitro and in vivo anti-malaria activity testing.