Genomic Epidemiology of Malaria in a Gold Mining Area in Pará, Brazil

Silvia Maria Di Santi at the São Paulo State Department of Health in Brazil will integrate genomics techniques into their routine malaria surveillance program to genetically characterize the parasite populations and monitor transmission dynamics in gold mining regions. Gold mining is associated with deforestation, which expands breeding sites for malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, poor housing conditions, and illegal activities, which makes eliminating malaria in these regions more difficult. They propose to use advanced sequencing technologies to better monitor the emergence of drug-resistant malaria-causing parasites and insecticide-resistant malaria vectors in a gold mining area in Pará, Brazil. They will collect samples from existing treatment and diagnosis sites and by recruiting miners, and collect Anopheles mosquitoes in different seasons. These will be subjected to whole genome and targeted amplicon sequencing, which will be implemented in a reference laboratory. They will also develop an interactive web browsing tool to visualize the raw sequencing data and reveal patterns of drug and insecticide resistance for informing interventions targeted to this region.