Australia’s partnership with James Cook University (JCU) is supporting Pacific Island Countries and areas (PICs) to combat mosquito-borne diseases and improve community health and well-being through strengthened mosquito surveillance and control. JCU manages the Pacific Mosquito Surveillance Strengthening for Impact (PacMOSSI) consortium, which supports PICs to  prevent, control and contain diseases such as dengue, malaria, Chikungunya and Zika.

The Indo-Pacific region’s health security system, or its ability to avoid and contain infectious disease threats with the potential to cause social and economic harms on a national, regional or global scale, has many weaknesses in both human and animal health. In the last 20 years approximately two-thirds of all new or re-occurring infectious diseases affecting people have originally come from animals. These types of diseases are called zoonoses.