January 2007 Report
Summary:
January was a busy month, with on-going molecular biology lab work, entomology work, GIS "proofing" of the new satellite maps, and the preparatory field work for the Epidemiology study. These various projects kept MIAM employees and the field teams busy, and also stretched the support staff needed for logistics of vehicles, office work and food preparation for the visiting scientists!
Campus construction projects continued as much as possible despite the frequent rains toward the latter part of the month. By months end, the dormitory was making good progress, and the kitchen / dining facility had the slab poured. The third of the four USAID-funded staff houses is now under roof and had internal plastering and electrical work being done.
Five MIAM staff members attended the 4th Zambian National Health Research conference, with two oral presentations and one poster presentation being given by MIAM staff.
I - General Site Development and Maintenance
The heavy and frequent rains the latter part of January have brought a lush green color to the campus, but also necessitated nearly constant slashing of the rapidly growing grass! Once again, our gardening staff and the casual laborers also hired for this period, did an excellent job keeping everything looking beautiful.
Some of the internal campus roads began to show signs of washing out from the rain water run-off, and so gravel was hauled and contours placed to help the situation.
The national electricity supplier, ZESCO, had many long and short outages of electricity during the month. In fact, one "Smart UPS" recorded 46 electrical outages in the four week period, and thus the back-up generator had to run for many hours during January, increasing the operating costs of keeping the research campus and labs functional! There were also times of "brown - outs" or low voltage on the lines, making equipment with motors run hot and thus potentially shortening their lives!
Two new street lights were installed on campus on the new internal electricity line circuit that has been run to the new dormitory and kitchen area.
II - Construction of Buildings
The building team continued work on House "C", the third of the four USAID-funded three bed-roomed staff houses. Roofing was completed, and internal wall plastering and electrical work were more than 50% completed by months end. One episode of cement being taken from the site was investigated, and appropriate measures were taken to discipline the responsible workers.
The construction teams under Pete Penno's supervision that were responsible for the dormitory and the kitchen / dining facility also made good progress, despite the frequent rains, with the one side of the dormitory brickwork now up to wall-plate level. The kitchen slab was poured by month end as well. Due to the slope of the ground where the building is being constructed, it necessitating a large amount of fill to keep the building floor level. This meant that many wheel barrows of gravel were dug, hauled and compacted for the area under the slab. In addition, the current pile of crushed rock is on the other side of the campus, and many wheel barrows also had to be hauled across campus for the slab structure! Despite this heavy reliance on manual labor and methods, the project moves forward!
III - Information Technology
After many frequent electrical outages in January, causing frequent "re-starts" of the main server running the original large C-band VSAT system, the whole system "crashed" in mid-January, and was declared not usable or repairable by our technical director. The broadband provider SkyVision was notified and agreed to terminate the contract we had had with them for the past 3 years, after being unable to offer a viable alternative. This situation required many hours of work to re-route all internet traffic over the smaller and slower back-up Ku band VSAT, leading to frequent slow or no connections to the internet, and also delayed email access for some days.
By months end, after negotiating for more bandwidth (in return for paying an increased fee) with the AfriConnect supplier to the smaller Ku band VSAT, the re-configured system was functioning well enough to allow for a trial of data entry with a data server at Hopkins from MIAM by four data entry workers simultaneously. The new relational data base being designed at Hopkins will hold data for all Hopkins funded projects at Macha, and is known as MachaDB.
Negotiations were also carried out with AfriConnect to supply a new C-band modem server that will allow the all-weather and larger C-Band VSAT to be put back in to operation by early March. We anticipate that there will be some operational problems as the new C band modem gets installed and configured, but that in the end the total bandwidth available to MIAM should increase over what it was before the "crash".
As local expertise develops with IT networking and provision of IT services, MIAM has had discussions with the organization known as "LinkNet", currently led by Gertjan van Stam, as to the best way forward. It is agreed that MIAM’s core business is not running an IT system, and that LinkNet is better able to do that as their own core business. Therefore, plans are underway for MIAM to sign a "Service Level Agreement" with LinkNet for provision of IT service and LAN assistance. There are various considerations as this process moves forward - such as how to capitalize the IT equipment currently owned by MIAM, and what, if any of it, should eventually be transferred to ownership of LinkNet, who will become the primary provider of internet services in the Macha community. This on-going process has necessitated that Mr van Stam will separate himself from MIAM as a part time employee at the end of February, and then enter into a contract with MIAM to provide internet services and consultancy work doing business as Linknet.
During January, several Dutch IT experts were in Zambia consulting with LinkNet, and also to help with the expansion of the wireless network at Macha. A different system of setting up the wireless network using several channels of operation, rather than only one as currently configured, was decided to be best, and there are now plans to change to this newer "mesh" type of wireless configuration in the coming months.
IV - Vehicles/Transport
Repairs of the Toyota Condor were completed in Lusaka, including a complete engine re-building. Since the vehicle is only three years old (and has now had two engine re-builds), it will be kept for use primarily on the regular weekly trips to Choma to get supplies and do banking work, and try to avoid long trips to Lusaka.
The old 1992 Toyota Hilux developed major engine problems again, and it was decided to sell the vehicle "as is" rather than doing any further work on it. The newest Toyota Hilux, bought just over a year ago, developed intermittent starter problems in late January, but could still be used if it was pushed to start it! Repairs are scheduled for early February.
Despite these many breakdowns, vehicles were always available for the needs of the various field study teams in January, such that no research program suffered due to lack of transport! However, it is clear that with the increasing fieldwork load, and the frequent breakdowns due to the rough operating conditions, additional vehicles will need to be purchased in the near future. We are grateful to the maintenance team who managed to keep the vehicles as operational as possible in January, despite the heavy use!
The new Ford Everest that was purchased in December was collected from Lusaka in early January, and has proven to be an efficient and useful vehicle for travel between Lusaka and Macha. It is one of the few MIAM owned vehicles that has dual front airbags, and given the frequent accidents seen on the Great North Road, it was deemed wise to use this vehicle primarily for the many trips to and from Lusaka.
In early January another used 5 ton FUSO truck, bought to replace the ageing lorry we have used for the past four years, was driven from Durban to Macha by two MIAM employees who were sent to collect it. It is currently waiting for remaining customs clearances so that it can be licensed for road use. Meanwhile, the old lorry developed transmission problems, and is now limited to only working in the lower gears. Despite this, the old lorry is still being used to haul necessary buildings supplies like sand and rocks to the construction site, but will be sold once this phase of the building project is complete.
V - Research Activities
Laboratory work continued and was helped by the arrival of two new lab technicians in late Dec / early January. The large volume of samples being genotyped by PCR under contract with the National Malaria Control Centre to determine recrudescence versus re-infection, took much of the time of the lab personnel in the early part of the month. Other work included Dr. Mharakurwa’s pursuit of the possible reason for malaria parasite DNA being found in saliva, as noted in his publication in the Malaria Journal late last year. Another attempt at obtaining grant funds to pursue this discovery was planned with preparation during January of an R21 grant application to the NIH.
The recently trained Zambian entomologist worked with Dr Norris and Dr Clennon from Hopkins in January to find anopheline larva in the local area, and brought them back to MIAM to begin establishing an anopheline colony in the MIAM insectary. Mr Musapa has proved to be adept at identifying the mosquitoes that are being captured or raised, and it is hoped that he will be able to establish a reproducing colony in the near future.
The Novartis sponsored Pediatric Coartem drug trial was due to begin recruiting patients in early January under Dr Janneke van Dijk's leadership, but with very few malaria patients being seen at Macha so far this year, the initiation of the study was postponed for one week. However, just as patient recruitment was due to begin again in mid January, the study team was notified that the total number of study subjects had been recruited at the five other trial sites in Africa, so we were advised not to start the study. This was disappointing considering the nearly 12 months of preparatory work that had gone into getting ready for the study! Dr. van Dijk will now shift her focus to preparing for a new multi-site TB drug trial, including a recruitment site at Macha, which is to be sponsored by the European Union. This effort will include setting up a new clinical research lab, under the direction of Dr Sue Penno, which will include facilities for TB cultures.
The Epidemiology study under Dr Moss and Dr Shah, began taking shape during their visit to Macha in January. Time was spent selecting and then developing a team that then underwent several weeks of training in administering the questionnaire and performing the malaria tests, anemia screening and filter paper collection of blood for later RT-PCR work on gametocytes. MIAM and Hopkins researchers also explored the newly chosen area for the study located to the east of Macha, including meetings with the acting Chief Mapanza and community leaders to discuss the study protocol and seek permission to carry out the study in that area. The team was warmly received by the various community leaders, who uniformly expressed eagerness to have a malaria research team work in their area. The satellite maps that had been obtained of the area proved to have a slight off-set of about 250 - 270 metres, so extensive work was started in the field to “proof’ the maps and correct them, so as to match waypoints as obtained by GPS instruments.
The grids and spark boxes ordered by Dr Shiff for his study on mosquito flight paths, arrived at Macha in January. Due to unclear written instructions and a fear and unfamiliarity of the high voltage associated with the spark boxes, little progress has been made on setting them up to see how well they can capture mosquitoes! It is hoped that during February one of the units will be set up on the MIAM campus to see how effective the grids are. Dr Shiff plans a trip to Macha in late March at which time more extensive implementation of the project can take place, since he has vast experience with these electrical grids, having used them for tetse fly studies in Zimbabwe many years ago!
VI - Personnel
In early January, MIAM hired a new lab scientist, Sandra Chishimba. Her main responsibilities will be to work with the Epidemiology study on the lab determinations anb malaria smears, but she is also expected to help with other lab work including PCR.
Five MIAM personnel attended the 4th National Health Research conference held in Lusaka mid January. During the opening session, the new Minister of Health, Hon Angela Cifire, MP, acknowledged the research work being done at MIAM, and specifically referred to the entomological work as some of the only work of its kind currently being carried out in Zambia. Both Dr Mharakurwa and Mr Kamanga gave oral presentations during one of the two plenary sessions, and Dr van Dijk presented a poster. Dr Thuma was assigned to chair one of the break-out scientific sessions. Overall, it was a good time for MIAM scientific staff to meet the many other scientists working in Zambia. During the conference, the newly appointed Acting Coordinator of the National Malaria Control Centre, Dr. Elizabeth Chizema-Kawesha, met some of the MIAM staff and invited the MIAM Director to attend the planning meetings at NMCC scheduled for early February.
Dr. Mharakurwa was unable to attend a conference in China in January on artemisinin therapy that he had been invited to. This happened when he was unable to obtain a visa for travel to China from the Chinese Embassy in Lusaka, despite spending several days on the effort!
Mr. Harry Hamapumbu was promoted to the position of Manager for Field Work, and will also take the role of Project Manager for the new Epidemiology Study that began this month.
VII - Other
A group of eight US nursing students from Messiah College, together with their two instructors, spent two weeks in January on the MIAM campus, as they experienced the aspects of nursing in a tropical country setting, as found at Macha Hospital.
A planned trip to visit Macha by Dr Cecilia Shinondo from the UNZA Dept of Parasitology had to be re-scheduled at the last minute due to transportation problems.