China's Ministry of Health, the Guangdong Provincial Government and the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific have established the WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance, Research and Training on Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong Province (GCDC).
The WHO collaborating centre, located in Guangzhou, will be formally launched at a ceremony there on June 13, 2006.
Among those scheduled to attend are Vice-Minister Huang Jiefu of the Ministry of Health of China; Dr Shigeru Omi, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific; Dr Deng Feng, Director of the WHO collaborating centre; Dr Ah Sian Tee, WHO Director for the Western Pacific for Combating Communicable Diseases; and Dr Henk Bekedam, WHO Representative in China.
A key focus for the new centre is disease surveillance and prevention. This includes exploring ways of enhancing epidemiological and virological surveillance through pilot projects, and programmes aimed at strengthening the integration of current surveillance systems.
The centre will also aim to further strengthen the capacity of the Guangdong CDC laboratory to detect emerging infectious diseases, including influenza.
Another important platform of the centre is to help carry out operational and epidemiological research and studies in areas such as the animal origins of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the human-animal interface in influenza transmission and efforts to estimate the disease burden of influenza and other infections.
The creation of the new centre provides a training base in Guangdong and other southern provinces of China in emerging infectious diseases. It is hoped that this centre will eventually expand to become a training base for neighbouring countries as well.
