Studies towards infectious disease elimination on the Bijagos Archipelago of Guinea Bissau

We will use Foundation funding to map the epidemiology and social determinants of malaria and neglected tropical diseases including yaws, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and soil transmitted helminths in the islands.  Microscopy, serology and molecular point of care diagnostic tests will be done in the field laboratory in Bubaque. Sequencing and strain typing, enabling the study of patterns of transmission, will be done through existing collaboration with MRCG and the Sanger Institute.      

The islands offer an ideal setting for evaluating novel strategies for disease elimination using cluster randomised intervention trials, as each island can be considered as a relatively isolated cluster in which interventions could be evaluated with little external interference. Foundation funding will allow us to train staff and set up the necessary infrastructure for longitudinal studies on transmission dynamics of several pathogens and for cluster randomized trials of novel interventions.