Infectious disease causes significant devastation to developed and undeveloped communities alike, producing massive losses of life, economic productivity and political stability. These infections can create the conditions that produce armed conflict as well as sideline unprotected units. Diseases come in many forms with many potential modes of transmission including contaminated food or water, mosquitos or other animal vectors, sexual contact, air particles and more.

Emerging threats—like SARS-CoV-2—can spread rapidly, creating widespread damage before adequate drugs and diagnostics are available; endemic threats—like malaria or dengue—have the potential to mutate, yielding infections that infect or kill more readily and degrade the efficacy of existing diagnostic and medical countermeasures. For example, due to an evolving malaria parasite, the only FDA-approved, field-based malaria rapid diagnostic test is no longer reliable because the primary component it tests for is no longer reliably found within the Plasmodium falciparum parasite.

As such, understanding the geographic incidence and prevalence of these diseases is critically important to public health, force health protection as well as effective medical countermeasure development. AFRIMS maintains disease surveillance sites and data-sharing partnerships with foreign militaries and governments, public health bodies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and industry developers across the Southeast Asia and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility in order to effectively track and characterize disease across multiple research focus areas.