Implementation of NAMRU SOUTH's mission is via threefold means: Partner nations include ministries of Defense or Health in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Colombia.

The lab conducts research throughout Peru including the cities and districts of Arequipa, Cuzco, Junin, La Libertad, Lambayeque, Madre De Dios, Piura, San Martin, Tumbes, Puno, Lima, Loreto and Ucayali.

The detachment was signed into agreement on October 21, 1983, in Lima between Fernando Schwalb Lopez Aldan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru and Ambassador Frank V. Ortiz.

A modern laboratory facility was constructed and inaugurated in Iquitos in July 2005 by US Ambassador Curtis Struble and Vice Admiral Jose Ricardo Rafael Aste Daffos, the head of Amazonian Operations for the Peruvian Navy.

Important scientific achievements include completing a Cholera vaccine field efficacy trial on 18,000 volunteers in Peru in 1993, development of an FDA approved rapid malaria diagnostic test (BinaxNow) from 1996 to 2001, the first clinical descriptions of Mayaro virus in 1999, the first identification of novel strains of dengue in Peru in 2000–1, investigations of HIV and hepatitis, conducting field efficacy trials resulting in region specific national malaria treatment guidelines in 2000, association of spotted fever rickettsia with an outbreak of febrile illness in 2004, demonstrating superiority of glucantime to pentamidine therapy for cutaneous leishmaniasis in 2005, developing non-human primate models of campylobacter and Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli diarrhea, a field trial of two yellow fever vaccines in children in 2005, and the discovery of Iquitos virus in 2010.