Phnom Penh is the administrative headquarters for AFRIMS activities in Cambodia. The infrastructure consists of office space located in close proximity to important partners including the Cambodian National Malaria Program, the U.S. Embassy and the Institut Pasteur Cambodia. It is the central hub for supplying our field sites and has a central hub for institutional review board study files and freezer space for sample storage. The Bacterial and Parasitic Diseases Department expanded surveillance sites in Cambodia to conduct surveillance for enteric pathogens associated with acute diarrheal disease. The main objective is to describe the prevalence of diarrhea etiologic agents among children, adult civilian and military personnel with diarrhea and non-diarrhea controls in Cambodia.

Current surveillance sites are located in the Battambang Referral Hospital, Military Regional 5 Hospital, SvayPor Health Center, Kratie Referral Hospital and Anlong Veng Referral Hospital with further reach in the region with referral networks to capture organisms of interest. At hospital laboratories, stool specimens are pre-screened by stool microscopic test and enteropathogens identification following the standard bacteriological methods. Those stools and isolates will be sent for confirmation of bacterial identification, antibiotic susceptibility test, characterizing of resistance genes and molecular typing of bacterial and viral pathogens at AFRIMS. The summarized data benefits to the Cambodian  Ministry of Health for future reference and decisions on empiric treatment. 

BPD currently studies malaria, diarrhea, multidrug-resistant organisms and respiratory pathogens (flu and SARS-CoV-2). The networks are purposefully fluid to capture samples within a four hour driving radius of the fixed hospital locations.