Strengthening Clinical and Genomics Research Capacity on Arboviruses
The West African region continues to experience major outbreaks of epidemic pathogens, including arbovirus (dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya), highlighting the need to understand the natural history of these diseases and strengthen the capacity for a coordinated response to their growing threat in the sub-region.
The overall goal of this project is to advance sub-regional epidemic preparedness and response through multi-disciplinary, integrated collaborative research and training initiatives to facilitate evidence-based policy for surveillance and control of epidemic pathogens in WAC-CREP countries of Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone with a focus on dengue, Zika, and chikungunya.
Specifically, this project seeks to:
- assessing the extent of the geographic and temporal distribution of asymptomatic and symptomatic arboviral pathogens to elucidate inter-epidemic maintenance of these pathogens in human and mosquito vectors
- examining the link between human host factors and virus genetic variants, in relation with clinical manifestation and disease severity
- strengthening subregional clinical research platform for drug and vaccine trials against arboviruses
Using innovative metagenomic approaches, the project contributes to multiple pathogen discovery, providing high-level laboratory and clinical research capacity to support countries’ epidemic preparedness for response to epidemics.
