The project will bring together specialists from meteorological, entomological and epidemiological backgrounds in order to provide the expert knowledge required to build accurate models of disease transmission in a changing climate. Collaboration between researchers at The Cyprus Institute, The Medical Entomology Laboratory of the Department of Medical and Public Health Services of the Cyprus Ministry of Health, and Imperial College London has been established.

The Cyprus Institute

Energy, Environment and Water Research Centre

The Cyprus Institute is a non-profit, non-governmental, research and educational institution, created in Cyprus in January 2005, with a scientific and technological orientation. Its development is planned in several successive phases, starting with the creation of cross disciplinary research centers, to be followed with the establishment of a graduate and undergraduate college.

The Institute operates under the aegis of the Cyprus Research and Educational Foundation (CREF). The first centre that became operational, the Energy, Environment and Water Research Centre (EEWRC), is being developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The formal inauguration of the EEWRC took place in December 2007.
People and roles in the project

Professor Jos Lelieveld and Dr Panos Hadjinicolaou; Jos Lelieveld and colleagues at the CyI have developed a regional climate model to predict changes in temperature (including mean summer and winter maximum temperatures) and precipitation (including annual rainfall and the number of dry and wet days) for a 25X25 km grid of the EMME region. Predicted temperature changes are in the range of 1-3°C in the near future, 3-5°C by the mid-century and 3.5-7°C by the end of the century – this is significantly higher than the global predicted average (using the same emission scenarios) of 2.8°C. Further information on the climate projection work carried out can be found on the project webpage: http://eewrc.cyi.ac.cy/climatechangemetastudy.

The CIVMME project aims to combine projections for changes in climate with climate driven models of infectious disease transmission developed at Imperial College London, to generate risk maps of disease transmission within the EMME for different climate change scenarios.

Dr Joanna Waldock: Joanna completed her PhD in mosquito anti-viral immunity at Imperial College London before working as a postdoctoral fellow at the CyI and Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London. Co-ordinating between colleagues at The Cyprus Institute, Imperial College London and the Medical Entomology Laboratory, Dr Waldock will facilitate in mosquito trapping, identification and genotyping of possible Aedes albopictus mosquitoes and other mosquito vectors of interest and in generating a database of biological parameters required for modelling of infectious disease transmission dynamics.

Contact:
Professor Jos Lelieveld: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dr Joanna Waldock: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Ministry of Health (Cyprus)
The Medical Entomology Laboratory

The Medical Entomology Laboratory is part of the department of Medical and Public Health Services, Ministry of Health (DMPHS) in Cyprus. The objective of the DMPHS is the adoption of preventative measures in a wide spectrum of the Environmental Health sector, by implementing various programs in cooperation with local authorities and other Departments. The spectrum of the DMPHS activities includes apart from protection of the consumers' health (food safety and inspection of food premises, monitoring and control of imported foodstuffs, and official control of the food consumed, distributed, marketed or produced in the island), controlling the quality of drinking water, inspection of public and private premises, monitoring of communicable diseases, implementation of health education programs, management, control of the bathing water quality, and implementation of antimalarial work. The latter was one of the initial objectives and accomplishments of the DMPHS. The Malaria Eradication Program, which included the fight against Anopheles mosquitoes and the reduction in the number of malaria cases, started in 1945 and was successfully concluded in 1950 when the Island was declared malaria-free by WHO. Today the programme for the prevention and investigation of infectious disease includes epidemiological investigations to locate the source of the infectious disease and prevention of new incidences. The Medical Entomology Laboratory has the facilities and expertise required for planning and implementing mosquito surveillance programmes and for morphological identification of mosquito specimens.

People and roles in the project

Marios Violaris, an Environmental Health Officer in the Ministry of Health, has 6 years experience in the Medical Entomology Laboratory identifying mosquito species and developing bioassays to determine levels of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes.

In co-ordination with colleagues at the Medical Entomology Laboratory, Imperial College London and The CyI, the project aims to identify whether mosquito vectors of important arboviruses (such as Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti) are present in Cyprus through the setting of strategic traps and larval collections.

Imperial College London

Division of Cell and Molecular Biology

Consistently rated amongst the world's best universities, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Within the Life Sciences Department, Division of Cell and Molecular Biology, a large number of research groups make up the Section of Immunology and Infection, which has a major focus on vector-borne diseases and their transmission (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cellandmolecularbiology).

People and roles in the project

Professor George Christophides has extensive experience in research and implementation of projects involved in vector-borne diseases. Using state of the art major equipment and facilities at Imperial College London, the project aims to carry out experimental work on Ae. albopictus mosquitoes. This will include bridging the gaps in the literature for disease transmission modelling providing estimates for modelling parameters related to climate and genotyping of mosquito specimens from Cyprus.

Collaborators at Imperial College London have researched the epidemiology of vector born diseases through mathematical modelling, recently focusing on the impact of changing climate on Malaria transmission. Using previously developed models as a framework the project aims to initially develop a model of CHIKV transmission by Ae. albopictus mosquitoes, expanding this to further mosquito vector-disease combinations of interest.

Contact:
Professor George Christophides: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.