Naval Medical Research Unit Five (NAMRU-5) was a research laboratory of the US Navy which was founded as a field facility of Naval Medical Research Unit 3 in Addis Ababa Ethiopia with a collecting station in Gambella on December 30, 1965 under an agreement between the US and Ethiopian governments.
In 1974 NAMRU-5 was established as its own command and was housed in the Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute (former Imperial Central Laboratory Research Institute).
The mission of NAMRU-5 was to conduct research and development on infectious diseases of military importance in sub-Sahara Africa.
NAMRU-5 built collaborative research efforts with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; with local medical facilities, including the Haile Selassie University Medical School and various hospitals in Addis Ababa; and with the London School of Tropical Medicine, the University of Washington, Case Western Reserve University Department of Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
NAMRU-5 was disestablished in April 1977 following the communist takeover of the government of Ethiopia which ordered all members out of the country in 4 days.