Commemorative Sundial

Celebrating Ten Years of Vaccine Research at St. George's Vaccine Institute, Ingleby House, Tooting, London

Her Royal Highness re-visited the Vaccine Institute on September 25th 2008 to mark the first decade since the official opening, and to unveil a commemorative sundial created and designed by Marion Brandis from a suggestion by David Lewis.

The face of the dial in the early hours depicts diseases that have already been conquered (starting with smallpox - researched by Edward Jenner, a St George's alumnus), then infections for which vaccines are well established, like polio, diphtheria. As the sun travels across the sky its shadow passes over infections that the Institute is working on at present, such as gastrointestinal infections, meningitis, hepatitis: work in progress. Then as the shadow lengthens in the late afternoon it is cast on infections where a vaccine is still a long way off, like malaria, TB and HIV: signalling the need for redoubled effort the next day! The 10 hours of travel mark the 10 years since the first trial (1996 - when the sundial was commissioned), and 10 years since HRH unveiled a mosaic by the same artist to commemorate the official opening of the Institute (1998). The motto encapsulates the concept of time inexorably passing, central to the concept of a sundial, with the positive public health message from a WHO-derived statistic "Every hour 300 lives saved by vaccines".

The infections represented are:

6: Smallpox

7: Rabies

8: Poliomyelitis

9: Tetanus

10-11: Diphtheria

12: Hepatitis A (upper), Hepatitis B (lower)

1: Mumps (upper), Measles (lower)

2: Meningococcus (upper), cholera (lower)

3: Malaria (and other vector borne diseases such as dengue)

3-4: Tuberculosis

4: HIV