Context Many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are not able to safely diagnose and adequately respond to pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential, such as Ebola or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus. Especially in relation to viral haemorrhagic fevers and neglected tropical diseases, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine…
Context In recent years, there have been efforts to upscale HIV treatment and prevention in the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including conducting studies among men who have sex with men (MSM). One commonly used method to recruit participants for these studies has been respondent-driven sampling. However, this…
Context Numerous international infectious disease outbreaks in recent decades have demonstrated that emerging infectious diseases are a major threat to public health. In Sri Lanka, a tropical island characterised by its rich biodiversity and abundance of wildlife, there is a particularly high risk of viral spillover events. However, the country’s…
Context Emergency medical teams (EMTs) are a key element of surge response capacity during national and international health crises, such as natural disasters and disease outbreaks. Strengthening EMT capacities is embedded in the approach of the WHO’s EMT Initiative. This can be facilitated by supporting countries in building national EMT…
Short Description Vaccines are crucial public health measures to fight vaccine-preventable diseases, e.g. measles. Further, COVID-19 vaccines, once available, will be essential to fight the pandemic. In Cox’s Bazar, 860,697 Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN)/Rohingya refugees live in camps. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), immunization rates among FDMN/Rohingya…
Short Description Since 2017, the TuNDRA project has been supported by the Global Health Protection Programme of the German Federal Ministry of Health. The project is carried out by a consortium consisting of the Robert Koch Institute, the International Vaccine Institute and partner institutions in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Hospital-based…
Short Description The early identification of pathogens plays an important role in controlling outbreaks of infectious diseases. The IDEA project will strengthen the diagnostic capacity for rapid detection of emerging infectious diseases in project countries and will gradually expand to include public health-relevant pathogens. Through community studies on the occurrence…
Short Description The countries of the WHO South-East Asian Region (SEARO), which account for a quarter of the world’s population, are particularly vulnerable to health emergencies because of both the usual risk of disease outbreaks and the additional threat of natural disasters. The International…
Short Description Multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis (TB) represent an increasing threat for global tuberculosis (TB) control. Successful control of M/XDR-TB requires efficient drug susceptibility testing (DST) as basis for designing effective therapy regimens. However, e.g. due to inadequate infrastructure, DST is often missing or delayed in countries…