UVA doctor receives $2.5M grant to track infectious diseases in Dhaka

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is awarding a $2.5 million grant to an associate professor of medicine at the University of Virginia.

The grant will help Doctor Mami Taniuchi and her her team do environmental surveillance and track numerous vaccine-preventable infectious diseases in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

“We don’t know if the detection of these diseases in the wastewater actually tells you something about that community transmission of that particular disease,” Dr. Taniuchi said. “So with this grant, we’re trying to find out if wastewater surveillance would be helpful.”

Taniuchi says their goal is to inform public health stakeholders and vaccine makers on what is responsible for peaks in infection in these low-resourced environments.

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