Newly appointed Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) yesterday said he hopes to enhance the government’s cultivation of disease-prevention talent, so that qualified people can be recruited and retained on teams nationwide.
Following Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang’s (石崇良) inauguration last week, former CDC director-general Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) was appointed as a deputy minister, and Lo took over the CDC.
In the handover ceremony at the CDC in Taipei, Shih said the public is mostly familiar with Chuang and Lo for their important roles in the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: CNA
Thanks to Lo’s vigilance in alerting the CDC about a then-unknown pneumonia in Wuhan, China, Taiwan was able to implement preventive measures at an early stage, Shih said.
After becoming head of the CDC in 2023, Chuang initiated several forward-looking disease prevention policies, including the national “One Health” antibiotic resistance management plan and improved vaccination strategies, he said.
He is one of the first people in the agency to specialize in big-data analysis, contributing greatly to statistics analysis and predictions during the pandemic, Shih added.
Lo has abundant hands-on experience, starting from when he was contributing to public health while serving his substitute military service in Africa, he said.
After joining the CDC, Lo was engaged in many disease investigations — including the influenza A (H7N9) virus, rabies and dengue fever — and was deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, during which he provided clear explanations of COVID-19-related information to the public, resolving their concerns, Shih said.
After expressing gratitude to his superiors, specialists, advisers and colleagues in the national infectious disease prevention network, Lo also expressed his deep gratitude to the country for helping the development of his professional career.
He said his experience working with infectious diseases in Africa inspired him to devote himself to disease prevention, and treating HIV/AIDS patients at National Taiwan University Hospital made him realize he wanted to help prevent diseases from a higher level, leading him to become a CDC physician 17 years ago.
People are the foundation of disease prevention, Lo said, adding that he hopes to bolster talent cultivation for recruiting and retaining qualified professionals for disease-prevention teams at the central and local level, as well as in infection control divisions in hospitals.
If disease-prevention teams are not properly staffed, trained and maintained, there would be no one to pass down their experience and knowledge when facing the next pandemic, he said.
Separately, CDC Deputy Director-General and spokeswoman Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told a news conference in the afternoon that three new cases of pertussis (whooping cough) were reported in a family last week.
CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said the index case was a one-month-old baby, who was too young to get vaccinated.
He began showing symptoms such as cough with mucus, shortness of breath, vomiting, loss of appetite and altered urine output last month, Lin said.
The boy was referred to an emergency room when his family members brought him in for a routine vaccination, and he was intubated and admitted to an intensive care unit for respiratory distress, he said, adding that the child was moved to a general ward after treatment, but was still hospitalized.
The mother and his one-year-old sister later tested positive for whooping cough, he said.
Forty-four cases of whooping cough have been reported this year, the highest for the same period in 10 years, Tseng said.
Early symptoms are similar to a common cold, but a person should immediately seek medical attention if they have a persistent cough for more than two weeks, experience coughing fits, are vomiting or make a high-pitched “whoop” sound when inhaling, she said.
In addition, the CDC announced that publicly funded flu vaccinations would begin on Oct. 1.
The vaccines would be trivalent vaccines, based on the WHO’s recommendation, it said.
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