The Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) (Thai: สถาบันวิจัยวิทยาศาสตร์การแพทย์ทหาร) is a United States Army project that started as a collaboration with the Government of Thailand to fight a cholera outbreak in Bangkok in 1958 and 1959.
First formed as the SEATO Laboratory following the 1956–1958 cholera pandemic, USAMC-AFRIMS is an agency of the US Embassy Thailand residing at the Royal Thai Army Medical Center in Bangkok.
AFRIMS is part of a global network of Department of Defense overseas medical research laboratories in Peru, Kenya, Egypt, and the Republics of Georgia and Singapore.
[2] The major infectious disease threats to soldiers in Southeast Asia include drug resistant malaria, diarrhea and dysentery, dengue fever, HIV, hepatitis, and scrub typhus.
AFRIMS has field sites across Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia, and the Republic of the Philippines, with ongoing collaboration in Bhutan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangladesh.