Fall 2009 Issue
Foundation Receives $25 Million Gates Foundation Grant for Disease Detection Work in Central Africa
A $25 million grant to the CDC Foundation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting a CDC collaboration with the World Health Organization aimed at strengthening disease surveillance and response in developing countries in Central Africa. It is the largest single grant the CDC Foundation has received to date.
Thousands of Central African children die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and polio. Improved surveillance will give health experts the information they need to develop effective vaccination campaigns and other health programs. And because this region has experienced outbreaks of Ebola and other highly infectious viruses, increasing local capacity for early detection, response and control of potentially deadly diseases protects not only local communities, but the global community as well. Scenarios like SARS and novel H1N1 flu have illustrated just how quickly an emerging disease can spread.
Key goals of the five-year program are to:
- help countries offer short- and long-term training opportunities to create a network of local disease detectives
- improve local laboratories so that they can quickly analyze and identify specimens from the field
- develop communications and data management systems that will help public health experts make informed and timely decisions about when and how to respond to chronic and emerging health threats
As administrator of this expansive program, the CDC Foundation is responsible for coordinating activities among many different expert teams at CDC and WHO as well as in-country ministries of health. Initial work was focused on establishing an expert steering committee and a project management team and selecting the three countries that will be involved in the first phase of the program. Project partners hope this will be a demonstration project that can be expanded to additional countries in Central Africa and beyond.
Read more articles from Fall 2009 issue of theFrontLine newsletter