At Tropical Medicine Meeting, CDC Foundation and Partners Present Cutting-edge Work

From October 30 to November 3, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) 2022 Annual Meeting will bring thousands of global health professionals together in Seattle, Washington to discuss some of the world’s most pressing health issues. We are excited that CDC Foundation-supported programs will, again, be a part of this important exchange of ideas, field experience and research.

For the first time in two years, the conference will take place both in person and virtually, and will feature opening remarks from Maurício L. Barreto, MD, PhD, MPH. Dr. Barreto is an Emeritus University Professor at Universidade Federal da Bahia in Brazil and a senior investigator at the renowned Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a prominent institution of science and technology in health in Latin America.

Global efforts to control and eliminate malaria will be among the topics discussed at the ASTMH 2022 meeting, and we are proud to partner on several programs that have made significant contributions to the fight against this devastating disease.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease, and these tiny insects have been described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “the world’s most dangerous creature.” Understanding mosquitos as vectors of disease is essential to preventing the spread of malaria, and CDC Foundation employees and partners will present recent findings from their ongoing mosquito research in the following presentation:

• Assessing vector competence for Plasmodium falciparum in a male-biased Anopheles coluzzii transgenic strain (Oct. 31, 11:00AM PST)

Through the World Health Organization-coordinated Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program (MVIP), the CDC Foundation partnered with CDC and other evaluation partners to assess the impact of RTS,S–the world’s first malaria vaccine on children in western Kenya. Findings from this evaluation will be presented in a poster session at the meeting:

• Acceptability and uptake of RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine 18 months after pilot introduction in western Kenya (Nov. 2, 11:00AM PST)

CDC Foundation partners will also take part in a symposium, which will be available both live and streaming, to share their research and experience in Tanzania where they have been working to expand malaria surveillance and lab capacity:

• Malaria Molecular Surveillance in Africa—Experience and Lessons Learned with a Focus on Establishing Genomics Capacity in Tanzania (Nov. 2, 8:00AM PST)

In another session, our work with CDC’s Center for Global Health on optimizing interventions and tools to help eliminate neglected tropical diseases will be featured:

• Biomarker discovery and assay development to detect antibodies to Onchocerca volvulus based on OvCol-1 and Ov7 (Nov. 2, 11:00AM PST)

The CDC Foundation has also been working with CDC and other partners to strengthen the capacity of Nigeria’s National Reference Laboratory to conduct serosurveillance–which involves monitoring antibodies to infectious disease in the blood samples of a given population to estimate susceptibility, exposure and immunity to various diseases. Findings from analysis of two parasitic diseases that cause serious health risks will be shared in the following poster sessions:

• Schistosomiasis seroprevalence among children 0-15 years of age in Nigeria, 2018 (Oct. 31, 11:00 AM PST)
• Seroprevalence and risk factors of Toxoplasma gondii in Children Ages 0–14 Years — Nigeria (Nov. 1, 12:00 PM PST)

Our work in Nigeria will also be one of five projects featured as part of a larger symposium about disease surveillance using blood samples in diverse geographic settings:

• Laboratory implementation of multiplex serologic methods: multi-pathogen integrate surveillance to inform public health decision-making in diverse geographic settings (Nov. 2, 3:00 PM PST)

For more information about the ASTMH conference and for streaming options, visit the organization's website.