Burkina Faso ICEMR - Project Summary – Burkina Faso ICEMR Overall Project This project will establish the Burkina Faso ICEMR, intended to bring together local and international experts in the host, parasite, and vector, under one umbrella to define the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of malaria across the Sudan, Sudan-Sahel, and Sahelian zones of Burkina Faso and within differing landscape environments (urban, rural, and migrant/gold-mining camps). In this process, parasite (species and genetics) and host data (including age and clinical status) will be tightly linked to the complexity of vector species (primary and secondary), their locations near transient or permanent water sources, and translational studies of vector competence, transmission dynamics, and drug and insecticide resistance. The malariology experts in this ICEMR are long-term collaborators and comprise field and lab scientists, clinicians, biostatisticians, and data specialists at the four key institutions, Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé, Institut des Sciences et Techniques, Colorado State University and Yale School of Public Health, as well as at partner institutions inside Burkina Faso and the U.S. Together they will form an Administrative Core to provide organizational capacity for the entire project, to manage budgets, facilitate the science, enhance communication within and outside of the project, and foster capacity building among all partners. We will also form a Data Management Core, which will provide infrastructure and oversight for the coordination of data collection and analysis occurring across ICEMR institutions in Burkina Faso and in the U.S. And we will initiate two interconnected research projects that will seek to reassess malaria epidemiology in the country. The first project will characterize the epidemiology of all human species across study sites via testing of mosquito blood meals and conducting longitudinal household-based cohorts over three years. The goal of these studies will be to carefully characterize the epidemiology and clinical impact of mono- and mixed species infections and to understand the performance of current diagnostics for detecting the symptomatic and asymptomatic reservoir of infection. We will also utilize samples to characterize their ex vivo and genetic resistance profiles to current and promising antimalarials. The second project will assess the natural vector bionomics and parasite transmission across spatiotemporal gradients, perform laboratory experiments of parasite transmission to validate our field findings using wild type mosquitoes and parasites, and also expose these infected mosquitoes to sub-lethal insecticide concentrations or drugs that the vectors are likely to encounter during the extrinsic incubation period in the field to determine if this influences parasite transmission. With the data from these projects and support from the Cores, we ultimately hope to inform country- wide policies, and build the local skill set and resources to sustainably advance malaria control across the country and identify specific strategies to help better control malaria in the greater West African region.
