One Health: Key Projects
The One Health Lab focused on investigating prevalence, distribution, and control strategies for
priority zoonotic diseases and other health issues of multisectoral relevance in support of endemic
disease control and epidemic preparedness and response. A prominent thematic area was research into the causes of acute febrile illness, as well as developing and implementing risk reduction strategies and policies in collaboration with local, national and regional partners. See below for an overview of key projects.
“Fever Project,” Investigating Acute Febrile Illness in Guinea
The Fever Project aimed to establish baseline knowledge of circulating pathogens that may impact human and animal health while also building workforce and laboratory capacity.
Taking a One Health approach, the four objectives of the project were to: (1) Identify pathogens causing AFI in humans in Guinea, (2) Identify evidence for zoonotic transmission, (3) Identify risk factors for zoonotic AFI in humans, and (4) Improve capacities for detection of high consequence pathogens. In this way, the project sought to strengthen sustainable and integrated human and animal surveillance for endemic and epidemic-prone pathogens in Guinea.
Addressing Biorisks in sub-Saharan Africa
This project, in collaboration with Global Implementation Solutions (GIS), supported efforts to promote and build capacities in basic minimum biosafety and biosecurity protections and multisectoral emergency response capacities in East and Central Africa.
The overall project comprised of three tasks: leverage the capabilities and network of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program (ERGP) at Georgetown to take a step-wise, risk-based and regionally integrated approach to strengthening biorisk management capabilities across the Central African region; build indigenous capacity to improve biorisk management, biosecurity, and biosafety practices in diagnostic and research laboratories and medical facilities; and enhance and promote multisectoral coordination across animal health, human health, border, and other related security sectors to mitigate biological threats.
One Health for Emergency Response in Kenya, Nigeria, and Somalia
This project supported emergency response operations in Kenya, Nigeria, and Somalia, continuing on existing collaborations that our partner, GIS, had established over the last several years. In particular, the project aimed to bring One Health concepts to Emergency Operations Centers, to help advance more integrated and all hazards approaches to public health preparedness and response.
In Nigeria and Kenya, extensive prior efforts built strong Emergency Operations Centers at the national level; but these capacities at the sub-national level were more nascent, and were the focus of this project. In Somalia, the focus was primarily on the national level, providing support to the recently established One Health coordinating body that worked across ministries to strengthen disease prevention, detection and response across the country.
One Health Biosecurity Legislative Assessments in Central Africa
Countries in Central Africa have some of the highest biodiversity in the world, and also have witnessed the emergence of a number of pathogens of global concern. While the main national laboratories had high standards of biosafety and biosecurity (including a BSL-4 facility in Gabon), and receive substantial international support, capabilities to prevent accidental or deliberate release or misuse of pathogens were not evenly distributed across the region’s many biomedical, veterinary, research and hospital laboratories.
In this project, GU and GIS collaborated with human, animal and environmental laboratories across Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon to build a network of expertise and a community of practice in biorisk management across the region. Through developing shared trainings, skill building, and communication, the network helped advance best practices in biosafety and biosecurity across the region.