United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC). AFRIMS is part of a global network of Department of Defense overseas medical research laboratories in Peru, Kenya, Egypt, and the Republics of Georgia and Singapore. USAMC-AFRIMS has nearly 500 staff members (predominantly Thai and US) and a research budget of approximately US$30–35 million annually.[2]
Research
The major infectious disease threats to soldiers in Southeast Asia include
drug resistant malaria, diarrhea and dysentery, dengue fever, HIV, hepatitis, and scrub typhus. These agents pose health risks to soldiers as well as to the civilian population, and thus form the major areas of research at AFRIMS. Research is predominantly applied research aimed towards finding, developing and testing new drugs and vaccines. New medications currently under development are for the treatment and prevention of multiple drug resistant malaria. Vaccines for dysentery, dengue fever, hepatitis E and HIV are also under development at AFRIMS. Products originally field tested or developed at AFRIMS include Hepatitis A Vaccine, Japanese B Encephalitis Vaccine, doxycycline prophylaxis for malaria, mefloquine antimalarial drug prevention, and halofantrine antimalarial drug treatment. Many Southeast Asian maladies are referred to as “orphan diseases” as they are ignored by the pharmaceutical industry. AFRIMS' emphasis on orphan diseases addresses a gap in global health treatments.[2]
AFRIMS also conducts surveillance of emerging diseases such as drug resistant P falciparum malaria, diarrhea agents: Campylobacter, Cholera O139, Cyclospora, E coli, Hepatitis E, HIV 1 E clade, drug resistant scrub typhus, dengue hemorrhagic fever, and influenza. AFRIMS has field sites across Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia, and the Republic of the Philippines, with ongoing collaboration in Bhutan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangladesh. AFRIMS has a modern animal research facility, accredited by the
Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC).[2]
