PREDICT

Primary Institutions: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) & Univ. of California, Davis One Health Institute

Status: Complete

PREDICT is a project of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats Program and is led by the UC Davis One Health Institute. Emerging infectious diseases significantly burden human and animal health and global economies. The PREDICT project aimed to prevent, detect, and be able to respond rapidly to the spillover of novel infectious pathogens from wildlife to humans.

The goal of PREDICT in Malaysia was to integrate wildlife disease surveillance into the public health infrastructure to create an early warning system for potential zoonotic disease spillover into domestic animals and humans. PREDICT Malaysia is a collaboration between:

• EcoHealth Alliance (EHA)
• Global Viral (GV)
• Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP)
• Department of Veterinary Services (DVS)
• Veterinary Research Institute (VRI)
• Ministry of Health (MoH)
• Department of State Health Sabah (DSHS)
• Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD)
• Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC)

Within the PREDICT project, EHA, SWD and DGFC established a Wildlife Health Unit (WHU), a branch of the, to conduct active surveillance across Sabah. Samsir Bin Laimun, DGFC’s senior research assistant and an active member of WHU, took part in sampling expeditions in Kinabatangan and in other areas in Sabah. In addition, EHA, SWD and DGFC set up the Wildlife Health Genetic and Forensic Laboratory in Sabah, including a BSL 2 Lab certified in accordance with laboratory standards set by the National Institutes of Health and the Centre for Disease Control.

Publication:

Anthony, S.J., Johnson, C.K., Greig, D.J., Kramer, S., Che, X., Wells, H., Hicks, A.L., Joly, D.O., Wolfe, N.D., Daszak, P., Karesh, W., Lipkin, W.I., Morse, S.S., PREDICT Consortium, Mazet, J.A.K., Goldstein, T., 2017. Global patterns in coronavirus diversity. Virus Evol. 3, vex012.