The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch (AFHSB) www.afhsc.mil has allocated $1.76 million in additional funding to ten Department of Defense laboratories for surveillance efforts related to the Zika virus epidemic.
The funded provided by AFHSB’s Global Emerging Infections Surveillance (GEIS) www.afhsc.mil/Home/sections/GEIS and Response section will look at Zika infections through clinic-based studies among military beneficiary and civilian populations who have received healthcare in Southeastern U.S, the Caribbean, Central and South America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Laboratories to receive funding include:
- Naval Health Research Center in San Diego will receive $204,600 to conduct surveillance in DOD and civilian populations in Arizona, Texas, and California
- Walter Reed Army Institute of Research will receive $186,000 to conduct clinic-based surveillance on the Zika virus
- Naval Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring Maryland, will receive $143,000 to support clinic-based surveillance in the Southern Caribbean countries of Grenada, Trinidad, and St. Lucia. The lab will also receive $105,100 to conduct a serosurvey for Zika and other vector-borne pathogens among DOD personnel deployed to West Africa
- Army Medical Research Directorate will receive $150,000 to conduct retrospective surveillance for Zika in humans and mosquitoes in Kenya
- Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences will receive $248,000 to conduct surveillance for Zika in humans and mosquitoes in Thailand
- Naval Medical Research Center-Asia will receive $230,340 to do surveillance in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Laos
- Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 based in Cairo, will receive $105,100 to expand current arthropod-borne virus surveillance efforts in Liberia
- Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6 based in Lima, Peru will receive $250,000 to expand current clinic-based febrile illness surveillance activities in Central and South America
- Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit-2 based in Norfolk, Virginia, will receive $90,000 to expand entomological surveillance for Zika in Haiti