Advisory Group of Independent Experts to review the smallpox research programme (AGIES)
In May 2007, resolution WHA60.1 of the World Health Assembly requested the Director‐General of the World Health Organization (WHO) to undertake a major review, in 2010, of the state of smallpox research and additional related research needed for public health purposes. This was undertaken so that the sixty‐fourth World Health Assembly, in 2011, could come to a global public consensus on the timing of the destruction of existing variola virus (VARV) stocks. In November 2008, the WHO Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research (ACVVR) decided that a comprehensive review of the literature and of unpublished data concerning live variola virus research should be undertaken by a group of scientists endorsed by the Committee and representing all areas of research and development on orthopoxviruses (OPVs).