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Readiness and Response

Containing Worldwide Threats

CDC has established a global network of Global Disease Detection regional centers that builds on its expertise in identifying and responding to public health threats at home. The regional centers collaborate with CDC international staff in 50 countries to detect and contain common and unique global threats that could spread to the rest of the world. In 2008, these centers discovered more than 20 new pathogens and trained 84 public health professionals to detect, diagnose, and respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases within their countries and regions. Each of the host sites have staff in three major programs: International Emerging Infections Programs, Field Epidemiology and Training Programs, and Influenza.

In 2008, CDC added the Global Disease Detection regional center in Kazakhstan to the established network of centers in Kenya, Guatemala, Egypt, Thailand, and China—achieving the goal of having a regional center in each of the six World Health Organization regions. This network unites well-established CDC resources with complementary resources from other domestic and international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and countries.

CDC collaborated with ministries of health and other partners in 2008 to increase the number of trained epidemiologists and public health professionals throughout the world. In addition, the Global Disease Detection network expanded activities in health communication and information technology, laboratory systems and biosafety, and the relationship between animal and human illnesses. These activities help to sustain and support CDC’s Health Protection Goals of People Prepared for Emerging Health Threats and Healthy People in a Healthy World.

Notable accomplishments of CDC’s global disease detection efforts in 2008 include providing support for rapid responses to more than 250 disease outbreaks and public health events of concern:

• Avian influenza
• Respiratory diseases of unknown origin
• Poisonings
• The viral hemorrhagic fevers Ebola and Marburg
• Outbreaks of cholera in Africa
• Rift Valley fever

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