The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health has established a laboratory that uses state-of-the-art molecular and demographic methods to track and map tropical infectious diseases such as malaria.
The new Gillings Innovation Lab is designed to provide researchers better information about the prevalence and location of diseases and help national and international health organizations around the world treat and control these diseases.
Steven Meshnick, M.D., Ph.D., an epidemiology professor in the School of Public Health and an expert on molecular epidemiology and infectious diseases, will lead the new project, known as the laboratory for molecular surveillance of tropical diseases. It will begin in January and continue for two years.
The lab will work with the research and evaluation company ORC-Macro, the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, and the Kinshasa School of Public Health in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group will measure the distribution of malaria, drug-resistant malaria, African sleeping sickness and other infectious diseases in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Meshnick's is the 10th Gillings Innovation Lab established in the school last year as part of Carolina Public Health Solutions. They're funded through a $50 million gift pledged by Dennis and Joan Gillings to anticipate future public health challenges and accelerate solutions through groundbreaking science, research, teaching and practice, and through interdisciplinary teams and effective translation of interventions to high-impact settings.
Read the full news release