Photo Credit WHO
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Yesterday the CDC’s director Dr. Thomas Frieden held a telebriefing called U.S. safer when CDC works with other countries to fight infectious diseases, to `discuss improvements in disease detection and response that may serve as a model for fighting infectious disease throughout the world’.
The transcript and audio are now available online, for those who were unable to attend.
Central to his presentation were two reports that appeared yesterday in the MMWR.
Rapidly Building Global Health Security Capacity — Uganda Demonstration Project, 2013
Strengthening Global Health Security Capacity — Vietnam Demonstration Project, 2013
Today, in a follow up, Dr. Frieden has penned a special blog post for CNN, where he discusses the dangers of a pandemic, and the steps that need to be put in place to prevent or mitigate its arrival.
08:49 AM ET
How to prevent the next pandemic
By Tom Frieden, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Dr. Tom Frieden is the director for the Center for Disease Control. The views expressed are his own.
Today marks the Lunar New Year – and the world’s largest annual migration. There will be more than 3.6 billion transit trips within China, in addition to countless international trips. Yet this celebration comes at a time of growing concern about the H7N9 avian influenza virus. And this concern is not unfounded – should this virus change into a form that easily spreads between people, the world’s next pandemic could occur in the next three weeks.
This combination of mass travel and an emerging virus such as this should underscore the connectedness of health security between countries. Of course, H7N9 influenza is just one example of how the health security of all nations, including the United States, depends on the health security of each individual nation. And regardless of where outbreaks occur, stopping them at the source is the most effective and cheapest way to save lives at home and abroad.
