Key facts
The Institute of Virology and Immunoprophylaxis (IVI) is the national reference laboratory for highly infectious animal diseases. It deals with the diagnosis of diseases such as footand-mouth disease or classical swine fever and carries out virology research, i.e. in the improvement of diagnostic tests and vaccines. Other duties carried out by the IVI are the registration of vaccines and batch controls, together with training and education. The IVI was established in the second half of the 1980s as the successor to the Federal Vaccine Institute in Basel. Investment costs at the time amounted to approximately CHF 60 million. The total cost volume of the IVI in 2003 was CHF 13.08 million.