Matheus and colleagues[6] recently reported detecting dengue serotypes by (reverse selleck transcription polymerase chain reaction) in 90% of blood samples from NS1-positive dengue patients presenting in the French West Indies, using venous blood specimens collected on filter paper (via a finger prick) and shipped at ambient temperature to French Guiana for analysis. Such sample collection methods would afford opportunity to capture events that may occur in the field, far from a military medical facility. While the US military conducts surveillance for disease and non-battle injury (DNBI) in deployed forces, limitations of its DNBI surveillance include incomplete data capture in deployed settings

and lack of systematic laboratory testing for patients with infectious syndromes. Better surveillance for infectious diseases using field-expedient sample collection methods would lead to better public health prevention and treatment in deployed forces, and also could enhance vaccine research and development efforts through better understanding of pathogen molecular epidemiology. Specifically for dengue, phase 3 vaccine trials are underway, and understanding global epidemiologic patterns will be important in any future vaccine field effectiveness trials, particularly among deployed military populations that would be a target SGI-1776 in vivo population

for vaccination. In addition, such a surveillance system could also be integrated with vector surveillance programs to yield a robust Gefitinib early warning system for infectious

disease threats. Enhancing surveillance efforts among deployed military personnel is also important from global health and geopolitical perspectives. History shows that military populations can introduce new diseases into local populations,[7] most dramatically during the influenza pandemic of 1918 in Europe[8] and more recently from the possible importation of cholera into Haiti.[9] The need for improved military surveillance is especially significant in Africa, where US military engagement is expanding as part of its mission to achieve a more stable environment that promotes political and economic growth there. US military personnel continue to contract malaria[10-12] and dengue[13] during overseas operations. However, there is no systematic, integrated syndromic and laboratory-based surveillance for acute febrile illness in US military personnel in Africa. The United States has more than 3,000 service members deployed to Djibouti, an epidemiologically important country in the Horn of Africa with migrant populations traveling from Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, and a major port for produce and animal exports. Because of this geographic niche and limited local surveillance capacity, there is an important need to characterize infectious disease risks in the region.