The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called for a collaborative effort from other countries to fight infectious diseases effectively and prevent them from spreading.
A new report prepared by the CDC has suggested that the United States should work with other nations to eradicate diseases including the communicable one as they say working in teams could help improve results and boost efficiency.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said “It is really important to stop the disease from where it has originated. Therefore, there is necessary to work as a global team.”
CDC concluded the report following an analysis of a six-month long pilot program in two different locations- Uganda and Vietnam. The U.S. health officials tracked infectious diseases from March to September 2013 in both the regions.
While the researchers focused on tracking Ebola and AIDS in Uganda, they covered H5N1 bird flu, cholera and enterovirus 71 in Vietnam.
The close observation and analysis helped the health officials to identify cases of West Nile virus, Zika virus, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus, hepatitis E virus, and a meningitis-causing bacteria early on and treat them accordingly.
The CDC team says that the Uganda Ministry of Health and CDC implemented upgrades in three areas:
1) First was strengthening the public health laboratory system by increasing the capacity of diagnostic and specimen referral networks
2) Second was enhancing the existing communications and information systems for outbreak response
3) And third was developing a public health emergency operations center
CDC finds the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia as a good platform where its recommendation that preventing the spread of infectious diseases is more effective when all countries work together could be tested. It says, during the games, people from all other the world will come into contact with one another. In such a scenario, contraction of infectious diseases will be very high.
