European Mobile Laboratory Project assists WHO in Ebola Outbreak in Guinea

As part of the international response to the current Ebola outbreak in Guinea, WHO and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) requested lab experts of the European Mobile Lab (EMLab) project to support the Ministry of Health of Guinea in viral haemorrhagic fever diagnostics in Guinea. A team of international responders from the consortium, departed to Guinea on 26 March 2014, taking with them mobile field lab equipment for the detection of Ebola virus.

The EMLab project is a multinational European initiative funded by the European Commission, EuropeAid Cooperation Office (DevCo). It includes partners from Germany, Italy, France, Hungary, Switzerland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. The EMLab project’s main objectives are to establish mobile laboratory units as well as a collaborative network involving European and African institutions.

The current EMLab team in Guinea is composed of scientists and technicians of the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine (Hamburg, Germany), the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology (Munich, Germany), the Istituto Nazionale per le Malattie Infettive „L. Spallanzani“ (Rome, Italy) and the Laboratoire P4 - INSERM Jean Merieux (Lyon, France). The team is setting up the mobile field lab in South-East Guinea. They will be joined by Public Health England (Porton Down, UK). The EMLab is working in close cooperation with the Ministry of Health of Guinea, WHO GOARN and Mèdecins Sans Frontières.

Additional multinational EMLab teams, including scientists and technicians from the Philipps- University (Marburg, Germany), the National Centre for Epidemiology (Budapest, Hungary), and the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) are ready to deploy to Guinea if needed in the further course of the outbreak.

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Contacts

Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine, Stephan Günther (Coordinator), guenther@bni.uni-hamburg.de, +49 40 285380 264

Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology, Roman Wölfel, institutfuermikrobiologie@bundeswehr.org, +49 89 992692 3981

Istituto Nazionale per le Malattie Infettive „L. Spallanzani“, Giuseppe Ippolito, giuseppe.ippolito@inmi.it, +39 06 5594223

Laboratoire P4 - INSERM Jean Merieux and Institut Pasteur, Sylvain Baize, sylvain.baize@pasteur.fr, +33 4 37282443 (40); Caroline Carbonnelle, caroline.carbonnelle@inserm.fr, +33 4 72768297; Delphine Pannetier, delphine.pannetier@inserm.fr, +33 4 72768291

Public Health England, Porton Down, Roger Hewson, roger.hewson@phe.gov.uk, +44 79 1759 6222

Website
www.emlab.eu

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