Non-malarial acute undifferentiated febrile illnesses (AUFIs) are caused by infectious diseases, without an identifiable source or focus of infection, in patients who present with undifferentiated fever and have negative results in diagnostic tests for malaria. AUFIs are believed to cause significant morbidity and mortality based on small focal studies. However, their true incidence remains unknown in Latin America for at least three reasons: 1) the etiologic agents tend to be underrecognized under the umbrella of malaria and dengue; 2) epidemiological surveillance without appropriate diagnostic tools; and 3) lack of proper training among scientists and health care personnel. The goal of this Global Infectious Disease Research Training Program is to form a strong team of Colombian scientists from Universidad de Antioquia, Universidad Nacional, and Instituto Colombiano de Medicina Tropical investigating endemic causes of non-malarial AUFIs with researcher partners at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) and University of California at San Diego. Program faculty have diverse and complementary areas of expertise conducive to developing synergistic research efforts to target the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of these neglected and frequently lethal diseases. To achieve the goal of this training program, we will offer a carefully planned portfolio of medium- and long-term training to address the needs identified in this proposal. Specifically, during the first year of the Program, we will train six medium-term (six-month duration) faculty members from three participating institutions in Colombia on fundamental methodology to rapidly establish a basic research infrastructure. Immediately thereafter, researchers from UTMB will travel to each participating institution for three weeks to assist in the process of implementation. We will support training across institutions in the region through visits for in-country training and through the use of advanced communication technologies and web-based common repositories of projects, research results, protocols, and publications. During Years 02 to 05 of the Program, we will provide long-term training to four PhD students and four postdoctoral fellows enrolled in local programs in Colombia, with a maximum out-of-country training component of 12 months. The research produced during training will be locally relevant and will address multiple areas in epidemiology, ecology, vector competence, and pathogenesis. An important planned outcome is the increased awareness of these diseases at the level of human and veterinary health professionals, as well as public health authorities. We will also contribute to the long-term impact and continuity of this training program by funding reintegration mini-grants for our long-term trainees and by appointing Colombian faculty as UTMB adjunct faculty members. At the completion of Year 05, we expect the three participating institutions in Colombia to have become centers of excellence in the research of arthropod-borne viral and bacterial diseases and leptospirosis in South America.
Non-malarial acute undifferentiated febrile illnesses (AUFIs) are prevalent infectious diseases throughout the tropics that are mostly transmitted by arthropod vectors, and the lack of definition of the underlying etiologies and involved vectors has prevented the development of appropriate public health interventions. Our Training Program will build research capacity in Colombia to address these important and frequently lethal diseases. The collaborating institutions in Colombia will become centers of excellence for research and training of future generations of Colombian and Latin American scientists.
