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WHY: Epidemics such as Ebola, dengue, and Lassa fever occur frequently in Africa and result in misery and death, highlighting the continent’s vulnerability. Anthropogenic changes accelerate processes leading to outbreaks and rapid pathogen spread threaten public health and food security. Disease surveillance is key to predict, prevent, and mitigate outbreaks. Timing is the essence for successful outbreak prevention and control. When cases of an outbreak are discovered in clinics—it is too late for prevention, and disease control is far more difficult than if changes in pathogen circulation were detected earlier. Tracking the spread of an epidemic also relies on strong surveillance. Disease surveillance using conventional means is especially challenging where biodiversity is high and resources are scarce, such as in Africa. This is where this project aims to make a difference!

WHAT & HOW: Our innovative approach for disease surveillance harness mosquitoes as samplers of pathogens from humans, domestic and wild animals (e.g. bats, monkeys, birds), including pathogens not transmitted by mosquitoes, e.g., avian flu. We focus on the “urban-rural-forest continuum” and describe the species compositions of mosquitoes, vertebrate hosts, and pathogens along it, to assess connectivity across these environments. We analyze mosquito i) bloodmeals (from humans, domestic, and wild animals) to identify the vertebrate host and its past exposure to pathogens using a multi-pathogen serological assay. The assays target antibodies to ≥10 pathogens with epidemic potential including Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Mpox, avian flu, Chikungunya, and dengue to generate pathogen-specific risk-maps; ii) employ metagenomics to detect pathogens in mosquitoes; and iii) integrate this information to guide public health decisions.