Integrating host nation and DOD entomology surveillance efforts

Since 1950, there has been a continuous US military presence in the Republic of Korea (ROK) to assist in deterring aggressive military threats. US and ROK military forces have long-shared military exercises and many Korean soldiers have served in US military units as Korean Augmentees To the US Army (KATUSA). Throughout this time, US preventive medicine personnel have conducted varying levels of arthropod and rodent surveillance to protect US and Korean military forces. Beginning in the late 1990s, the US military arthropod and rodent surveillance activities increased and expanded collaborations were developed between US military forces and the Korean military and civilian public health communities (Korea National Institute of Health, Korea University, Seoul National University, and Konkuk University). The information derived through these collaborations has been equally shared and serves to protect the US forces and the people in the ROK. Accomplishments include: temporal and spatial distributions and identification of rodent and arthropod pathogens and their vectors, relative prevalence of tick-borne pathogens, new distributions of spotted fever group Rickettsia, isolation of Hantaan virus from US soldiers that led to areas of transmission based on spatial differences in Hantaan virus, and a better understanding of the relative prevalence of scrub typhus. In addition, collaborative efforts with US counterparts (e.g., Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit, US Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Navy Medical Research Center, Uniformed Services University, and the Armed Forces Pest Management Board) augmented DOD and Korea counterparts through the institution of new technologies. This led to the identification of new mosquito species and vectors of malaria, new species and distributions of ticks, and initial disease risk analysis modeling for malaria and Japanese encephalitis.