USRA's Assaf Anyamba Awarded Funding from the DoD-Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch

Congratulations to Assaf Anyamba (USRA/GESTAR) whose proposal titled "Rift Valley Fever Risk Monitoring, Mapping and Prediction", which was submitted to the DoD-Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch to support Global Emerging Infections Surveillance, has been approved for funding. The period of performance is 10/01/16 - 09/30/17. Anyamba is PI, and Co-PI's are Kenneth J. Linthicum (USDA/ARS-CMAVE) and Compton J. Tucker (NASA/GSFC). 

Anyamba provided this project summary: "Monitoring and predicting ecological and climatic conditions associated with vector-borne disease outbreaks early enough to prevent them or reduce their impact on US DoD personnel, beneficiaries and other relevant global populations in general is a major goal of the AFHSB - Global Emerging Infections System. This proposal is a request for funding to support operational maintenance, revision and restructuring the modeling capability to monitor and map areas prone to Rift Valley fever (RVF) [Phlebovirus, Bunyaviridae] in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. RVF is classified as one of the critical emerging vector-borne and zoonotic diseases that threaten DoD health care beneficiaries, requiring integration into the GEIS system for monitoring, control and prevention. The episodic nature of RVF requires systematic and continuous monitoring of global climate and land surface conditions in RVF endemic areas, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, along the Nile River Valley, and more recently in key areas of the Arabian Peninsula along the Red Sea. The Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa are areas of national security importance for various DoD Geographic Combatant Commands (GCC) including AFRICOM and CENTCOM, supporting NCMI intel-risk assessments and other numerous US government agencies including USDA, PPFST-WG and State Department. Therefore, advance knowledge of climatic and ecological conditions that could result in disease outbreaks with potential to destabilize the social, political and economic infrastructure of these regions is required for DHA/AFHB-GEIS to assist governments and other international partners in surveillance, control and critically for situational awareness concerns of deployed DoD personnel."