Spring 2006 Issue
Partnership Mobilizes CDC's Global Health Force in Africa and Asia
How do you get 50 cases of antiretroviral drugs that will help people living with HIV to a remote village in Kenya? Or transport delicate laboratory equipment from a hospital 200 miles away over rough Cambodian roads? These are challenges that health experts serving in CDC’s internationally based programs encounter every day.
Through a partnership between the CDC Foundation and the GM Foundation, CDC will acquire sport utility vehicles and light trucks for transporting critical supplies, personnel and equipment to regions where they are needed most. Currently, CDC has field stations and programmatic activities in 43 countries where CDC scientists work with local health officials and healthcare providers to protect and promote health through disease surveillance, epidemiology, laboratory research and outbreak response.
“Easy movement of resources plays a crucial role in efficiently delivering health services and monitoring for outbreaks in countries where serious health threats are common,” says Stephen Blount, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s Coordinating Office for Global Health. “These vehicles will provide reliable transportation to help CDC and our partners overseas address existing health challenges like HIV/AIDS and detect and respond to emerging threats like avian flu.”
The CDC Foundation will purchase 16 GM vehicles in-country and deliver them to CDC field stations and regional sites during 2006 and 2007. Programs in Cambodia, Thailand and Kenya will receive the first nine vehicles this year to support activities in CDC’s priority areas of influenza, refugee health, HIV/AIDS, emerging infectious diseases detection and response and community-based disease surveillance. Programs in Angola, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa and Laos will receive vehicles next year.
“When the CDC Foundation requested our help in meeting the CDC’s pressing need for transportation in the field, we saw a natural opportunity,” says Rod Gillum, GM vice president of corporate responsibility and diversity and chairman of the GM Foundation. “The GM Foundation doesn’t treat or cure infectious diseases around the world, but we can help mobilize those who do.”