Thursday, September 29, 2011

International cooperation to strengthen public health systems

September 28, 2011

By Charlene Porter, editor at the location of any IBM Digital

Washington - passed the United States and the World Health Organization to a higher level of cooperation, through the consolidation of their resources to assist other countries in strengthening the infrastructure of health for the benefit of its citizens and the rest of the world.

The two sides signed in September 19 / September in New York is officially called the "Memorandum of Understanding" to help developing countries improve their capacities in the field of public health and to achieve better compliance with international health regulations (IHR). Obama has emphasized its commitment to this endeavor in his speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Obama said in his speech on September 21 / September, "we must unite our efforts to prevent, detect and combat all types of biological threats."

And the United States and WHO have a long record of cooperation and mutual support in working together to contain outbreaks of infectious diseases, and expand coverage of vaccines, and to reduce mortality rates of infants and children. Based on the official in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for the preparation of the conditions of emergency health (ASPR) in the Ministry of Health and Human Services, this agreement to raise the level of cooperation "approach adopted by the government as a whole."

Dr. Jose E.. Fernandez, Acting Deputy Director for the preparation of the conditions of emergency health (ASPR) in the global health security, "it comes to any event that may have a negative impact on public health in the world. And will form the radioactive emissions, and leaks of chemical, and outbreaks of food-borne disease , and pandemic flu are all examples of "events that have the ability to move quickly across borders and causing harm to people regardless of their nationality.

Organizations have taken an expanded form in recent years that the reason for the sudden outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza cases, a major panic in the scope of public health, and demonstrated how you can transport systems and the expansion of globalization, the development of the disease on the path of rapid progress.

And signed a four hundred and ninety-state systems, global health, but Fernandez says that many countries need some help to raise their capacity to identify and diagnose diseases, and monitoring and follow-up, response and confrontation.

United States is working for some time to train and assist the professionals in the field of medicine from the developing world. Notably, it holds the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) network of international centers for disease detection throughout the world to work directly with countries and WHO to strengthen capacity for disease surveillance and response. The Medical Research Unit of the U.S. Navy in Cairo has brought teams of specialists from several African countries during the panic caused by bird flu in order to train them on how to detect the disease.

Fernandez stressed that "the laboratory [Defense Department] alone and provided a massive amount of general support to countries and institutions." But the newly signed Memorandum of Understanding seeks to reach new levels in the area "to improve, enhance, and protect global health security successfully."

This new level of commitment to global health systems at the same time when the government implemented the Obama Global Health Initiative, which strives to invest in more effective health care programs. Fernandez explained that helping countries to build more capacity to meet the responsibilities imposed by the World Health systems conform with the initiative of Obama.

Fernandez added, "When we do such activities in capacity building, should be associated with the ownership of the country itself to these activities, must also be sustainable capacity, and this means that it must address the health needs of the general day to day."

WHO seeks to raise the capacity of all countries in the areas of assessment, reporting, and responding to infectious disease threats, and works in order to achieve this level of efficiency by the year 2012.

No comments: