The preventive medicine team, embarked aboard the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20), was on the hunt for Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes during a subject matter expert exchange (SMEE) in support of Continuing Promise 2015 (CP-15) on June 6.
Lt. Cmdr. James Dunford, an entomologist assigned to Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit 2, Norfolk, Virginia, and preventive medicine technicians worked alongside Panamanian host nation counterparts to conduct mosquito surveillance.
In addition to Panama, the team has conducted SMEEs in Belize, Guatemala, Jamaica and Nicaragua, covering topics on mosquito surveillance and control, mosquito pathogen testing, and insecticide resistance monitoring. Additional exchanges are planned for the remaining mission stops in Dominica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Haiti.
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Image: US Navy