Courtesy Photo | MAJ Eads (left) and SPC Campos (right) analyze mosquitos utilizing the AI assisted IDX...... read more read more
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The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research-Africa conducted disease surveillance in support of African Lion 2025 from May 9–19 in Morocco.
African Lion is U.S. Africa Command's largest annual exercise. This year, the exercise surpassed 10,000 participants from more than 20 countries, including seven North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. The exercise is designed to strengthen multinational cooperation as well as regional security.
WRAIR-Africa supported the exercise as part of a disease surveillance team funded by GEIS and comprised of experts from multiple units who are trained to detect threats to force health. The team included Maj. John Eads, Chief of Entomology at WRAIR-Africa, and Maj. Luis Pow Sang, Chief of Microbiology at WRAIR-Africa.
“This was the first time WRAIR-Africa conducted biosurveillance at African Lion,” said Maj. Pow Sang. “GEIS compiled a team of experts with top-of-the-line equipment that was best suited to monitor for disease threats at the exercise.”
The team conducted vector surveillance from multiple locations across the exercise, including the collection and analysis of mosquitoes and ticks. Additionally, role 1 medics collected samples from U.S. service members who showed disease symptoms. All these samples were tested for a variety of possible pathogens.
“The disease surveillance team collected common disease vectors and received de-identified human samples from the medics for analysis,” explained Maj. Pow Sang. “The team used three different platforms to evaluate the samples for possible disease threats. This maximized our ability to identify disease threats and to evaluate the pros and cons of each platform while scanning for more than 50 different possible pathogens.” Surveillance information learned from the U.S. service member samples was shared with leadership at the end of the exercise.
This exercise successfully demonstrated the ability to deploy this novel multi-layered approach to pathogen detection in the field. But preparation started long before there were boots on the ground.
“With this being our first time conducting biosurveillance at African Lion, there were plenty of logistical hurdles,” explained Maj. Eads. “As an example, we had no means of getting our equipment on the ground preceding our arrival, so every member of the team had to hand-carry their equipment into the site. Sometimes this introduces the risk of forgetting something small that hinders the operation – like losing a cord or missing an adaptor – but the entire team was fully mission-capable and this effort was a fantastic success.”
When it comes to incorporating disease surveillance for these military exercises, the required lead time to plan the logistics may be long, but the team is already thinking ahead to how they can enhance this capability in the future.
“We are refining our plans for future biosurveillance initiatives,” said Maj. Eads. “Conducting exercise surveillance like this enhances preventative measures in the field, protecting force health from the pathogens that we find. We want to expand those benefits by collaborating with the host country to get in earlier and do pre-exercise surveillance.”
For more information about WRAIR’s disease surveillance and other capabilities, visit our website: https://wrair.health.mil/Global-Research/
| Date Taken: | 08.26.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 08.26.2025 12:20 |
| Story ID: | 546520 |
| Location: | MA |
| Web Views: | 58 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, WRAIR-Africa monitors for disease threats at African Lion 2025, by Zeke Gonzalez, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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