US and Shanghai health authorities opened an epidemiology center in the Chinese city yesterday to train experts in sleuthing out ways to prevent chronic and epidemic diseases.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is helping with training and technical assistance at the center that will be “driven by what are the major public health issues in this country,” CDC deputy director Stephen Thacker said.
Outbreaks of SARS and bird flu since 2003 and last year’s swine flu epidemic have driven home the rising risks from new diseases or deadly mutations of epidemic ailments, especially in developing countries that may lack the infrastructure to cope with them before they get out of hand.
Earlier joint research in field epidemiology helped identify routes of infection for some of those ailments. Some of the work has been related not to epidemics but to unexplained illness and deaths.
Experts traced mysterious clusters of deaths in southwest China’s Yunnan Province to consumption of certain wild mushrooms. Research into cases of paralysis among leukemia patients prompted the recall of unsafe medicines.
Thacker told reporters they also need more experts in the broad areas of public health, not just communicable diseases.
“We need to look at what’s killing people, what’s putting people in hospitals.,” he said.
Wang Longxing (王龍興), director of the Shanghai Health Bureau, said the government is starting to invest more in prevention.
“We want to avoid the situation where people will only be willing to spend money to go to see the doctor when they are already sick,” Wang said.
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