Why the U.S. Navy is moving to investigate Yemen’s deadly malaria surge

In response to a deadly resurgence of malaria that’s afflicting populations across sub-Saharan Africa, the Navy is searching for a contractor to supply data collection and medical surveillance services in Yemen to inform its investigations before the disease potentially spreads elsewhere, or infects U.S. forces.

The escalating malaria epidemic there — triggered by a fusion of humanitarian crises, environmental shifts, and changing mosquito dynamics — marks one of the most severe modern global health emergencies. 

“Navy Medicine Research & Development’s various overseas commands have long-standing missions underway to closely monitor disease vectors and other threats across the world that pose a risk to the health and lethality of U.S. warfighters worldwide,” a military official told DefenseScoop on Thursday.

Broadly, NMR&D is a global network of Navy and civilian scientists who identify and produce medical solutions to protect U.S. military personnel. The teams operate specialized research laboratories based around the country and all over the world.

For example, a Navy-led infectious diseases institute located in Egypt is looking to lead a new “prospective surveillance study of acute fever and malaria, to characterize the organisms causing these infections,” according to procurement documents published this week.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that causes people to suffer from fever spikes, fatigue, breathing problems, organ failure and brain damage, among other serious and fatal symptoms. 

Cases were common across much of America from the late 1800s through the early 1950s, when the government helped eliminate malaria transmission through widespread sanitation upgrades and massive mosquito control campaigns. 

While the disease is now largely concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions — with the highest mortality rates recorded in Africa — local outbreaks have reemerged in the U.S. and other areas in recent decades. Reports surfaced this week, for instance, that a German airport employee died of malaria after being infected by a mosquito that arrived on an airplane.

Meanwhile, in conflict-stricken Yemen, communities are currently facing a vast and dangerous malaria surge that has expanded beyond historical hotspots into formerly more low-risk areas. The rise of an invasive, urban-dwelling mosquito species that’s resistant to common insecticides there and in other parts of Africa has induced an unexpected spike in malaria cases on the continent this year.

“Naval Medical Research Unit (NAMRU) EURAFCENT has one contract with the National Malaria Control Program in Yemen, who provides data on malaria cases and mosquito species and numbers,” the military official said. “This data is part of the Department of War’s Global Emerging Infections Surveillance (GEIS) funded project to assess infectious disease risks in the region.”

(President Donald Trump rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War last year, though an official name-change still requires an act of Congress.)

The department’s GEIS program coordinates global tracking and response activities to counter infectious diseases that have historically resulted in high casualties and combat ineffectiveness in deployed military forces, or pose contemporary risks to personnel and operational readiness.

In the Navy’s newly released contracting documents, officials laid out their aims to work with a vendor that can launch a local team to provide clinical, operational, and laboratory support services that will inform studies into the sources of acute fever and malaria across government hospitals and medical centers in Aden, Yemen.

“This includes the enrollment of a minimum of 400 and a maximum of 600 cases per year, administration of questionnaires, and the performance of Rapid Diagnostic Testing (RDT), and microscopy to all enrolled cases,” they wrote. 

If necessary, due to travel constraints and security conditions in Yemen, the collected samples may need to be securely hand-couriered by the contractor to a Navy medical laboratory in Djibouti.

The envisioned contract would run for an initial 12 months, with two option years of follow-on performance.

Notably, Aden is a major port city on Yemen’s southern coast near the entrance to the Red Sea. The U.S. has ramped up its naval patrols and presence around that region over the last few years, largely due to the war with Iran and associated drone and missile threats from the Yemen-based Houthis. 

The procurement materials indicate that the government also intends to award a firm fixed-price contract “for online access to highly accurate and detailed near real time freight intelligence and commodity flow trade data.” 

The military official did not provide details about that dataset, or how it would support research and analysis on maritime trade against the backdrop of the project’s medical endeavors, in response to questions this week.

“The global stage of war is a constantly dynamic environment, making it critical for the Department of War to maintain up-to-date information on what factors could compromise U.S. force readiness and warfighter lethality in any given region of the world,” they told DefenseScoop.

Interested vendors must submit their comments, questions and capability statements to the Navy by Sept. 1.