History

In December 2004, the board of directors of the Pasteur Institutes from the Asia-Pacific region met in Hong Kong.  They decided to implement a new regional initiative called RESPARI (Research-driven rESPonse to Acute Respiratory Infections).  This research program has the ambition to tackle several aspects of Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI), including: diagnostic and surveillance in adults and children, epidemiology, molecular mechanisms of diseases and development of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

The Asia-Pacific zone is certainly a region of choice for implementing such a program, because of its previous history as the active site of emergence of viral epidemics (viz., influenza and SARS), its susceptibility as an area of emergence of a human-avian H5N1 reassortant, etc.  Moreover, the Pasteur Institute Network in this region includes centers situated in tropical/subtropical climates, in developed and developing countries, and their complementarities represent a very strong asset.

There is a real need for studies on the epidemiology and etiologies of acute respiratory infections in adults and children in the Asia-Pacific zone by implementing classical and cutting-edge molecular diagnostic tools.  The countries in the region are unequally prepared with respect to these new risks.

In terms of technology, the equipment required to identify pathogens and to control them often exceeds the capacities of the national health services to ensure the smooth running of a warning system to quickly identify new pathogens and/or the emerging of an epidemic.  Due to the poverty level of the general population and in particular of the social groups that are more vulnerable to this type of infection, patients do not have the means to afford the costs of examination by the best available techniques.

In terms of organization, the monitoring systems in the poorest countries are insufficiently developed to enable a timely description of epidemic episodes and an identification of the epidemic sources and channels of dissemination.  Communication problems between the authorities responsible for human and animal health can be also an obstacle to provide an adequate response to control inter-species spreading of infections.

We have, therefore chosen to implement first a public health oriented program, which will serve as a blueprint to the development in parallel of more fundamental research projects.  Such a strategy has proven its validity with the pilot program for prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Cameroon. 

Public health investigations will constitute useful and necessary actions to guide epidemiological and fundamental research, as well as new diagnostic developments and, conversely, they will benefit from results originating from basic research projects.

Several agencies have been approached to secure the necessary funding to implement the program and agreements were signed with the following organizations:
Department of Health and Human Services;
Li Ka Shing Foundation.

In addition, a special contribution has been received from the French Ministry of Health.

The public health is funded by the Agence Française de Développement through the SISEA project.

At the beginning of the year an international Scientific Advisory Board was formed and it was decided to hold an annual scientific meeting to discuss and critically evaluate the progress of the ongoing activities.  Scientists from all participating centers met in Hong Kong on May 7-9, 2007 for the first such workshop to present their most recent data related to RESPARI.