USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats Program, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Africa and South America

Under a RESPOND (response and capacity-building) contract of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), E & E is providing technical services to support building local capacities to respond to pandemic and zoonotic disease outbreaks in hot-spot locations in Uganda and throughout Africa and South America, focusing on the Congo Basin, the Amazon Basin (Peru, Brazil, Ecuador), India, and Southeast Asia.  RESPOND is the fourth component of a five-part program that USAID is developing to address emerging zoonotic diseases (e.g., Ebola, SARS, Nipah virus, and the like, which can be transmitted between animals and humans).  The other components of the USAID program are PREPARE (planning), PREDICT (surveillance), IDENTIFY (laboratory), and PREVENT (communications and behavior change).

E & E is providing expertise in outbreak response and is developing public/private partnerships with extractive industries (oil and gas, mining, and logging) to establish disease monitoring and response programs.  The focus of the overall contract is to respond to emerging diseases and to build capacity in areas where the diseases are likely to occur, by performing animal viral sampling before and during operations, enlisting health officers and/or clinics at remote facilities to report any unusual disease occurrences or outbreaks, and training health personnel at remote clinics to respond to outbreaks.