Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens Laboratory (LaPathER)

The Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens Laboratory, or LaPathER, was set up in 2017. It is affiliated with the graduate school of health sciences at Nazi Boni university and is situated within the Sanou Souro university hospital.

Mission

LaPathER provides diagnosis, teaching and research facilities and aims to position itself as a major player in the future in the fields of diagnosis, monitoring and research on emerging and re-emerging pathogens thanks to African solutions and strong North-South and South-South collaboration. It is working on research projects on host-pathogen interactions according to the One Health concept.

Organization

LaPathER is composed of 5 teams:

• Epidemiology of emerging and re-emerging diseases
• Biology of emerging and re-emerging pathogens
• Clinical research into emerging and re-emerging diseases
• Physiology, pathophysiology, pathogeny and pharmacology of emerging and re-emerging diseases
• Biosafety and quality management

The Biology team is divided into five units:

• The medical bacteriology unit, which hosts the main national laboratory for antimicrobial resistance
• The unit for monitoring the pathogenic bacteria responsible for meningitis
• The research unit into antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which runs active AMR surveillance projects with the One Health approach within international consortiums and alongside various partners (Mérieux Foundation, Africa CDC, WHO, RESAOLAB, AVIESAN SOUTH).
• The mycobacteriology unit
• The virology unit, with projects on Covid and AIDS, including reinforcing the surveillance of SARS-Cov2 variants in 13 African countries (AFROSCREEN), evaluating the effectiveness of various treatments (COVERAGE AFRICA) and studying the risk factors for the progression of HIV infection)