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Global Health Matters

July - August, 2008  |  Volume 7, Issue 4

Fogarty awarded special funds from HHS to analyze global flu data

More than $2.2 million of a congressional appropriation will go to the Fogarty Center to support influenza research and training by Fogarty scientists and its grantees and collaborators.

The money was awarded in late spring by the Office of the Secretary of HHS from a pool of about $34 million Congress designated for international pandemic flu activities.

Fogarty staff made the case with HHS that the Center's two decades of linking top U.S. scientists with those in more than 100 countries have built a research network of thousands who are ready to share information that could lead to more effective avian and pandemic flu control measures.

Overall, Fogarty's research activities are based on a systems approach to global health that integrates molecular evolution to the population dynamics in an effort to understand the mechanisms underlying influenza transmission and the potential for a pandemic. The funding will go to a program that would:

• Expand existing data-sharing and collaborative research activities to a wider geographic area of the world, especially the tropics, to gain a better understanding of both avian and human influenza virus evolution at a global scale.
• Expand epidemiological research and planning in countries vulnerable to bird flu and build long-term relationships between U.S. and foreign scientists in both government and academia.
• Conduct workshops in Europe and either Africa or South Asia where scientists from dozens of countries can collaborate.
• Try to close the gap between and among global surveillance efforts and to build analytical and predictive tools.

Link to related story, "Study says to base flu policy on life-years saved"