Disease Surveillance

EPI Researcher discovers that people who have developed immunity against dengue virus have built-in protection against infection from the Zika virus.

UF researchers with Emerging Pathogens Institute affiliations have created a rapid, cost-effective point-of-care test for the Zika virus.

UF medical geography and EPI researchers recently participated in a study that successfully predicted dengue fever outbreaks on the Caribbean island of Barbados, using climate data.

The number of vector-borne diseases acquired in the U.S. more than doubled between 2004 and 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported. But what does the future hold? Two studies published recently by University of Florida faculty members at the Emerging Pathogens Institute provide insight into this question, based on research conducted in Haiti.

EPI Investigators publish paper on the social and spatial ecology of dengue in an Ecuadorean outbreak.

Once thought to live only in Southeast Asia, the bacteria that cause melioidosis are now known to exist in South and Central America plus the Caribbean.

Nelson lab travels to Haiti to educate students at the Université d’État d’Haiti Faculté de Médicine et de Pharmacie in Port au Prince on water-borne diseases.

EPI investigator Afsar Ali led a study characterizing how the pathogen that causes cholera persists in wild, low-nutrient aquatic environments for decades.

The banana crop is an important commodity in Tanzania and much of East Africa, with many in the region eating up to 400 kilograms of bananas per person per year. Plant diseases are a major threat to the sustainability of the crop, and over the past decade, a bacterial infection once found only in Ethiopia has risen in prominence in all countries around Lake Victoria, including Tanzania.

Researchers at the University of Florida and several peer institutions have developed a model mapping the spread of Zika virus in the Americas and predicting that the virus arrived in Brazil in late 2013 or early 2014 before spreading throughout the region. The model also projects the number of microcephaly cases that will occur by the end of the year, with hundreds of cases in Mexico, Haiti and Colombia, and thousands of cases in Brazil due to Zika virus infection.