Nepal
The Gangetic Plain, including India and Bangladesh, is considered a hotspot of emerging infectious diseases, particularly zoonoses such as Nipah Virus from bats. Situated at the transitional zone between the Gangetic Plain and Himalaya highlands, Nepal is a country of ecological extremes, rich in biodiversity, supporting a growing human population and economy that bring humans, domestic animals, and wildlife into close proximity. Through our lead implementing partner, the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal (CMDN), and partnerships with in country key government agencies, ministries, non-governmental organizations, and public and private institutions, PREDICT is expanding SMART surveillance into Nepal to improve the capacity to rapidly and accurately identify zoonotic pathogens of potential pandemic threat in wildlife to further expand disease surveillance in the South Asia region.
Country Coordinator: Dibesh Karmacharya
Dibesh Karmacharya has a conservation biology degree from Wayne State College (US). He worked for Caliper Lifesciences of Princeton, New Jersey (USA) as a Research Associate on transgenic animal models. He also promoted GE Healthcare’s Genomics and Proteomics platforms as consultant in New England area of the US, primarily New York, Boston and Toronto (Canada). He is one of the founders of the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal, a Kathmandu based Clinical epidemiology and wildlife genetics research center. He also heads Intrepid Nepal Private Limited, a biotechnology company based in Nepal that focuses on molecular diagnosis. He is the International Director for the Center for Molecular Dynamics-Nepal and the Executive Director of Intrepid Nepal Pvt. Ltd. Currently he heads Nepal Tiger Genome Project and Snow Leopard Genetics research in Nepal as Principle Investigator. He has published several papers on HIV/AIDS, conservation genetics and molecular diagnosis. He will be putting together both the field and lab team to implement PREDICT project in Nepal.
