Combating re-emergent infectious diseases

The tropical island of Langkawi was an incongruously idyllic setting for a conference dedicated to the debilitating infectious disease Chikungunya. The conference was organized by the European project ICRES, and supported by our own SEA-EU-NET project, which seeks to expand and deepen research collaboration between Europe and Southeast Asia.

Meaning ‘that which bends up’ in the Makonde language, Chikungunya’s name is derived from the crippling joint pain which is one of its most severe symptoms. The disease is transmitted from person to person by mosquito, and presents like a particularly severe flu, with victims also suffering headaches and skin rashes. Whilst rarely fatal, the symptoms of Chikungunya can persist for many months, and no specific treatment or vaccine for the condition exists.

Chikungunya is a clear example of a re-emergent infectious disease. After an interlude of several decades in which few cases were reported, Chikungunya broke out in 2004 in coastal communities in East Africa. The disease spread to the French overseas department of La Reunion and infected over 270,000 people. At its peak in early 2006, 45,000 cases of Chikungunya were diagnosed in a single week, placing great strain on a healthcare system in which a quarter of doctors and nurses were also suffering from the condition.

The disease has since spread to India, Asia, and even outside the tropics, to Italy and France. Italy reported endemic transmission of Chikungunya, with an outbreak triggered by someone who had contracted the disease in India but spread to others locally by mosquitoes. One of the main areas of concern around Chikungunya is that a warming climate is causing mosquitoes to be found at more northerly latitudes, increased the risk of introducing mosquito-borne diseases to populations with no native immunity.

The ICRES consortium is led by the UK’s Pirbright Institute, and together with collaborators in Europe and Southeast Asia, the project has generated an improved understanding of the disease. This has improving screening and should eventually enable the development of antivirals and vaccines (with an experimental vaccine candidate reported by a separate group at Waginingen in the Netherlands earlier this year).

We have been involved in the project since inception. Predecessors in the Southeast Asia Science and Innovation team convened a matchmaking workshop in Singapore to develop consortia for European research funding, which resulted in the formation of ICRES. We regard this as one of the best examples of Europe-Southeast Asia collaboration enabled by the SEA-EU-NET project, addressing a shared societal challenge, and leveraging the complementary capabilities of European, Malaysian and Singaporean partners.

The SEA-EU-NET project itself is one of our largest and longest running initiatives in the Southeast Asia Science and Innovation Team. Funded initially under FP7 from 2007-12, the project has recently been renewed to 2016. We work with partners from Europe and seven of ten ASEAN states to address common societal challenges – in our case focusing mainly on health. Europe’s new research funding programme, Horizon 2020, offers a chance to build upon and deepen these collaboration, and its Southeast Asian launch will take place at a SEA-EU-NET organized conference in Bangkok in January 2014.