DoD GEIS Surveillance Activities Conducted by DoD

Overseas Medical Research Units

The overseas medical research units of the Naval

Cambodia

Malaysia

Syria

Medical Research Center and the Walter Reed Army

Canada

Mexico

Trinidad and Tobago

Institute of Research receive 65% of the core DoD 

Djibouti

Myanmar

Thailand

GEIS budget.  In FY 2001 this amounted to approxi 

Ecuador

Nepal

Uganda

mately $4.55 million.  Most of these funds are directed

Egypt

Oman

United Kingdom

towards collaborative surveillance relevant to both the

France

Peru

Vietnam

DoD and the host countries.  Some of these collabo 

Ghana

Philippines

Yemen

rations reflect the roles of NAMRU 2 and NAMRU 3

as WHO Collaborating Centers for Emerging and

The overseas laboratory DoD GEIS program has

Reemerging Infectious Diseases.  

several core surveillance efforts that it supports:

influenza, drug resistant malaria, antibiotic resistant

Institutions and governments in the following locations

enteric organisms, fevers of undetermined etiology,

had substantive FY 2001 DoD GEIS collaborations:

and syndromic surveillance.  Some of the labs have

Argentina

Indonesia

Saudi Arabia

added additional programs reflective of local needs

Bangladesh

Japan

Singapore

or special opportunities.  The most important pro 

Brunei

Kenya

South Korea

grammatic highlights and findings follow.

Bolivia

Laos

Suriname

Naval Medical Research Center Detachment (NMRCD)  Lima, Peru

As part of its highly collaborative work throughout

South America, the Naval Medical Research

Detachment (NMRCD) in Lima, Peru, continues an

expanding program to fill regional gaps in the WHO

regional influenza surveillance network.  As with all

other NMRCD programs, the underlying philosophy

is to establish programs that are increasingly integrated

into host nation surveillance systems so that eventually

NMRCD's role can become more advisory.  The

NMRCD influenza surveillance program, which during

FY 2001 was conducted at 10 sites in Argentina,

Ecuador, and Peru, focused on persons 2 to 55 years

who met a specific case definition.  Throat swabs

from 482 cases were sent in FY 2001 to the Air Force

influenza laboratory in Texas for isolations to be

made.  Acute respiratory disease pathogens have

grown from about 30% of the specimens.

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