Fogarty provides support to Ebola-affected countries

November / December 2016 | Volume 15, Number 6

To help the countries most affected by the recent Ebola epidemic, Fogarty has launched a new program to strengthen research training in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In the first round of funding, four U.S. institutions received grants to partner with academic centers in two of the West African countries. The support will enable them to design training programs to increase expertise in Ebola, Lassa fever and other emerging viral diseases.

The collaborations will strengthen the skills needed to evaluate vaccines, develop new diagnostic tests and treatments, and identify the most effective intervention strategies for disease outbreaks. The planning grants, totaling $200,000, are intended to help institutions prepare to compete for larger, longer-term Fogarty support to implement research training programs.

“We hope these small awards will catalyze efforts to identify existing resources and plan to address development of sustainable research capacity in the countries that suffered so horribly from Ebola,” said Fogarty Director Dr. Roger I. Glass. “By training local researchers in epidemiology and lab skills, and helping them form networks with U.S. scientists, we believe future disease outbreaks can be better contained.”

Fogarty has issued a second call for applications, Emerging Epidemic Virus Research Training for West African Countries with Widespread Transmission of Ebola (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone), to support further awards, with a deadline of Feb. 22, 2017.

2016 Planning Grants for Emerging Epidemic Virus Research Training for West African Countries with Widespread Transmission of Ebola

• Duke University
  Planning Grant for Emerging Virus Research Training in Sierra Leone
  Principal Investigator: Drs. Chris Woods and Nathan M. Thielman
• Tulane University
  Preventing the next storm: Building research and epidemic response capability at Njala University, Sierra Leone
  Principal Investigator: Drs. Daniel G. Bausch and Lina Michiko Moses
• Vanderbilt University
  Research Capacity Building in Post Ebola Countries
  Principal Investigator: Drs. D. Troy Moon, Donald Samuel Grant and John Scribner Schieffelin
• Yale University
  Sustainable capacity in Liberia for informing surveillance and response through modeling, biostatistics and computational tools
  Principal Investigator: Dr. Alison P. Galvani

More Information

• About the Fogarty program Emerging Epidemic Virus Research Training for West African Countries with Widespread Transmission of Ebola (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone)
• Full news release: Ebola-affected countries receive NIH support to strengthen research capacity
  Fogarty/NIH news, October 26, 2016
• Ebola virus disease news, information and resources from Fogarty

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