Hosted by University Sao Paulo Medical School at the Centro de Convenções Rebouças ZIKAlliance, the multinational and multidisciplinary consortium coordinated by Inserm, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and created in response to a Horizon 2020 funding call by the European Commission’s Directorate-General Research and Innovation, has officially started its activities with the kick-off meeting held in Brazil over the 4th and 5th December 2016.
The consortium, which gathers 52 institutional partners located in 18 countries, has met for the first time in São Paulo, Brazil, to coordinate and plan its working activities over the next 3 years. Over this timeframe, ZIKAlliance aims to link large observational multicentre cohort studies with basic scientific research to focus on three key objectives: understanding the impact of Zika virus infection during pregnancy and identifying short and medium term effects on newborns; tracking and documenting the natural history of Zika virus infection in humans and their environment in the context of other circulating arboviruses; building the overall capacity for preparedness research for future epidemic threats in Latin America and the Caribbean in collaboration with ZIKAction and ZikaPLAN.