Malaria Capacity Building in Liberia: The US Navy Joins Forces to Defeat a Deadly Foe

Abstract : Malaria ranks among the top three important vector-borne diseases for the US military. In response, over the past five years, the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (AFHSC-GEIS) and Department of Defense (DoD) overseas labs have conducted several projects aimed at enhancing or establishing hospital-based febrile illness surveillance platforms and conducting arthropod surveys (Fukuda et al 2011). The Navy Entomology Center of Excellence (NECE) in Jacksonville, FL recently collaborated with the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 (NAMRU-3) and the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research (LIBR) to deliver a two-week Public Health and Vector Control Course for 22 students from the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL). The classes were directly aimed at teaching skills to control Anopheles gambiae, the primary malaria vector in Liberia. During the final two days of the course, students conducted an indoor residual spray operation (IRS) for barracks housing AFL soldiers. Large-scale IRS has remained the cornerstone of the World Health Organization (WHO) malaria control plan since the 1950s and is one of the four major components of the President s Malaria Initiative (PMI) aimed at reducing malaria transmission (Hoel et al 2013).