{"id":417248,"date":"2025-04-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=417248"},"modified":"2025-04-18T08:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T08:50:12","slug":"wrair-africa-protects-force-health-at-justified-accord-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=417248","title":{"rendered":"WRAIR-Africa protects force health at Justified Accord \u201825"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n From left to right: Col. Gerald Kellar, Maj. John Eads, and Maj. Luis Pow Sang collect waste water from sewers at the Counter Insurgency, Terrorism, and Stability Operations Center during Exercise Justified Accord.
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Back to U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa (SETAF-AF)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

NAIROBI, Kenya \u2013 <\/strong>The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research \u2013 Africa<\/a> conducted disease surveillance in support of Justified Accord<\/a> 2025 from Feb. 10\u201321, in Kenya.<\/p>\n

Justified Accord<\/a> is U.S. Africa Command’s largest exercise in East Africa. The 2025 iteration involved more than 1,500 participants from 20 countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia, Morocco, Tunisia and the United Kingdom. The exercise is designed to strengthen multinational cooperation as well as regional security.<\/p>\n

WRAIR-Africa supported the exercise by identifying pathogens in the environment and coordinating with medical personnel to ensure appropriate protective measures. The team conducted daily vector surveillance, collecting mosquitos, sandflies and ticks for pathogen testing, as well as analyzing wastewater samples.<\/p>\n

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\n Maj. Eads and his team identify larvae of the Anopheles mosquito, the vector for malaria parasites, near the Justified Accord cantonment area.
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During the exercise, WRAIR-Africa identified nine major pathogen threats including the bacteria that causes Q fever<\/a>, the bacteria that causes epidemic typhus, jingman tick virus, and norovirus. The findings were shared with Role 1<\/a> medical assets and health protection personnel to mitigate risks to participating service members.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy telling the force health protection (FHP) and health service support (HSS) personnel that the pathogen is in the environment, you can keep the soldiers safe,\u201d said Maj. John Eads, Chief of Entomology at WRAIR-Africa. \u201cSomething like norovirus is a particular threat\u2013that\u2019s the pathogen that takes out cruise ships all the time because of how easily it spreads. Identifying it before it spreads is essential to getting preventative measure in place and keeping service members healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Maj. Eads reviews tick specimens collected by the WRAIR-Africa Entomology team.
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WRAIR-Africa\u2019s role in the exercise was essential to protecting force health, but it also provides a second major benefit: an opportunity to learn.<\/p>\n

In addition to surveillance, WRAIR-Africa used the exercise as an opportunity to assess support needs for large-scale combat operations. This included evaluating the effectiveness of tools such as rapid diagnostic tests that don\u2019t require cold-chain storage, which can be limited in austere environments.<\/p>\n

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\n Maj. Luis Pow Sang, Military Chief of Microbiology, performs initial validation and testing of BioFire film array for use in real-time exercise support.
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\u201cParticipation in Justified Accord embeds us with the warfighter so we can see where there are gaps,\u201d said Eads. \u201cDuring and after the exercise, we ask: what products are necessary in large-scale combat operations? It\u2019s an opportunity to determine how WRAIR-Africa can further support force health protection and Health Service Support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the exercise, WRAIR-Africa compiled a report to inform future surveillance operations and refine its support strategies for forward-deployed environments.<\/p>\n

About Justified Accord<\/strong><\/p>\n

Justified Accord is U.S. Africa Command’s largest exercise in East Africa. Led by U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa (SETAF-AF), and hosted in Kenya, Djibouti and Rwanda, this year’s exercise will incorporate personnel and units from 23 nations and five observer countries. This multinational exercise builds readiness for the U.S. joint force, prepares regional partners for UN and AU mandated missions, and increases multinational interoperability in support of humanitarian assistance, disaster response and crisis response.<\/p>\n

Justified Accord content can be found on the official Justified Accord DVIDS feature page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About SETAF-AF<\/strong><\/p>\n

SETAF-AF provides U.S. Africa Command<\/a> and U.S. Army Europe and Africa<\/a> a dedicated headquarters to synchronize Army activities in Africa and scalable crisis-response options in Africa and Europe.<\/p>\n

Follow SETAF-AF on:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook<\/a>, X<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a> & DVIDS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From left to right: Col. Gerald Kellar, Maj. John Eads, and Maj. Luis Pow Sang collect waste water from sewers at the Counter Insurgency, Terrorism, and Stability Operations Center during Exercise Justified Accord. (Photo Credit: Courtesy ) VIEW ORIGINAL Back to U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa (SETAF-AF) NAIROBI, Kenya \u2013 The Walter Reed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417250,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417248"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417255,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417248\/revisions\/417255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/417250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}