India, US CDC Well-Placed to Respond Better to Pressing Public Health Challenges

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report on the occasion of fourth Indo-US Health Dialogue to celebrate more than a half-century of successful collaborations with the New Delhi government.

According to the //report, the CDC's decades-old, highly productive, and mutually beneficial public health collaboration with India has achieved measurable success across several critical areas, including, Polio eradication, controlling HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and influenza, building core public health capabilities across disease surveillance, laboratory systems, public health workforce and emergency response and scaling up antimicrobial resistance, and infection prevention and control.

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‘The CDC's mutually beneficial collaboration with the Indian government has grown to include life-saving efforts on tuberculosis, influenza, antimicrobial resistance, vaccine-preventable diseases, and strengthening of laboratory systems, disease surveillance, public health workforce capacity and emergency management.’

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The pandemic has further strengthened the CDC's partnership with the government of India.

The CDC's Country Director, Meghna Desai said: "The impact and strategic value of CDC's long-standing collaborations with the Government of India are increasingly clear. Many of our joint efforts are being leveraged to support India's ongoing Covid-19 response."

"Based on past successes and current public health initiatives, the CDC and the government of India are well-placed to better respond to the world's most pressing public health challenges," said a statement from CDC.

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It added further that the government of India has successfully addressed challenges over the past decades through major investments in the nation's public health institutions, dedicated resources and platforms to expand one of the largest public health workforces in the world, and a sustained commitment to confront challenging disease control priorities in the country and the region.

"From smallpox to SARS-CoV-2, CDC collaborations with India have benefited both our countries, the entire region, and indeed the world," the statement said.

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More than 50 years ago, CDC detailed an epidemiologist to the World Health Organization (WHO) country office in India and almost three decades later in 2001, the agency formally established a country office in India, with an initial focus on HIV/AIDS prevention.

Today, the CDC's mutually beneficial collaboration with the Indian government has grown to include life-saving efforts on tuberculosis, influenza, antimicrobial resistance, vaccine-preventable diseases, and strengthening of laboratory systems, disease surveillance, public health workforce capacity and emergency management.

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Source-IANS