The Signature
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NAMRU-3 Tests Us Every DayStory by MC1 Natalia Murillo and MC1 Jacob Sippel; Photos by MC1 Natalia Murillo, Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti
T
he gray paint on the sign is peeling a little. It sits on an old, faded yellow, double-stack tucked between the chapel and the Red Cross. ‘NAMRU’ is written in white. If you didn’t know what it was, you would walk right by it, never knowing who was inside or their importance to every resident of Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti (CLDJ). Last year, as COVID-19 crippled the world as we knew it, camp leadership realized they didn’t have capacity to meet what they saw was going to become a huge demand for testing. They called on the U.S Naval Medical Research Unit-No. 3 (NAMRU-3) for backup. NAMRU-3 was already here, but not testing for COVID-19. In March, 2020, NAMRU-3, regionally based in Sigonella, Italy, quickly answered the call to aid Camp Lemonnier’s Expeditionary Medical Facility (EMF) in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. NAMRU-3 deployed a senior microbiologist and a hospital corpsman, sent additional equipment and supplies for COVID-19 testing, and realigned their research mission to primarily support the COVID-19 testing and mitigation mission. Since March, NAMRU-3 has rotated through four additional science officers to ensure continued testing operations. The Expeditionary Medical Facility (EMF) also dedicated two hospital corpsmen to be trained to conduct COVID-19 testing and to support NAMRU-3’s testing mission. In total, the small team in the faded double-stack has tested 20,000 samples for COVID-19 since the pandemic began in spring 2020, and also continued research and testing for other infectious diseases as well. The Camp Lemonnier NAMRU-3 laboratory is
unique in that it’s the only forward-deployed research platform in the Department of Defense. From here, NAMRU-3 provides state of the art laboratory research and analysis and forward-deployed military population research. They also quickly react to outbreaks, monitoring and detecting infectious disease threats before they get out of control. Before COVID, NAMRU-3’s focus was on longterm surveillance of enteric diseases, respiratory illnesses, acute febrile illness, and sexually transmitted infections in the Horn of Africa. “We primarily deal with research and surveillance in terms of infectious diseases,” said microbiologist Lt. Jae Dugan. “For example, we work in Djibouti to understand what infectious diseases are present and how to combat them in order to ensure mission readiness and force health protection.” He added, “Obviously, the focus has changed since last March.” In 2020, they added COVID-19 testing. Early on the number of swabs they received to test was low, but they did always had a 24 hour turn-around time. “What is notable and impressive is that our small lab was able to process large numbers of COVID-19 samples, comparable to large medical centers, with a less than 24 hour turn-around time,” said Lt. Cmdr. Stephen M. Eggan, who serves as Research Science Director at NAMRU-3. He was deployed to CLDJ through the winter months of 2020 into spring, 2021. “That is unrivaled even in the private sector.” “One-day turn around on COVID-19 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing is a keystone of EMF’s success in supporting operations in this AOR,” stated Cmdr. Brian Ellis, Michaud Expeditionary Medical Facility officer-in-charge. “Our ability to reliably and quickly detect the presence of SARS-
