Health security effort to boost global disease response

Top administration officials joined representatives from federal agencies and 26 nations to launch an international effort that will help to boost the global capacity to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks, Feb. 13.

At the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, are speaking about the Global Health Security Agenda.

Joining them were officials from Finland, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, South Korea China, India, Indonesia and other participating countries.

Representatives from three international organizations in Washington and Geneva, including the World Health Organization, were there, along with officials from the departments of State, Defense and Agriculture, and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In advance of the international meeting, officials from the National Security Council, the Defense Department and CDC held a conference call with reporters to detail the U.S. plan to work even more closely with partners to strengthen the global disease response.

On the call were Laura Holgate, senior director for weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and threat reduction at the National Security Council; Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs; and CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.

"With the Global Health Security agreement, we're talking about making the world safer and more secure by strengthening our ability as an international community to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks," Holgate said.

Such diseases include Ebola and other hemorrhagic illnesses; flu; dengue fever; Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS; severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS; and other infectious diseases that arise in nature or that are accidentally or intentionally released, she added.

In 2007, most countries agreed to abide by updated International Health Regulations, or IHR, adopted two years earlier at the 58th World Health Assembly. The legally binding rules accepted country by country had been revised specifically to help in containing diseases that potentially could spread quickly worldwide.

The WHO set a five-year deadline for countries to ensure their national capacities to identify, investigate, assess and respond to such public health events. Continued...

source: www.dolphin-news.com