Dr-Martin_01 Rwanda 2017 Audio Transcript

Dr. Rebecca Martin, Presenter:  In thinking through my response to this I looked at the work I had done in immunization and also in HIV and the multi-faceted nature of health in trying to achieve goals that are set for HIV 90-90-90 as you know for UNAIDS, and with immunization we have polio eradication we have measles rubella and various other efforts. All of these initiatives take a multi-faceted approach. The first component I would say is the relationships and partnerships. One agency or one organization cannot do everything. It takes everybody to work together. Many of these efforts have private public partnerships engaged in these efforts. And the importance of my role now is ensuring that we maintain these partnerships. That the relationships with the countries. With non-governmental organizations, and other multilaterals such as the World Health Organization and the Global Fund are critical in being able, for CDC to do the work it needs to do in achieving the goals that I have mentioned. It also requires that in looking at our high level engagement in these efforts that accountability is critical. And efforts that I have worked on in eradication. We have to make sure that we vaccinate every child. So this effort of finding every single person, making sure that it can be accounted for and that it is a valid and accurate response is critical. And this is the same sort of effort we need in all the work the Center for Global Health does; be it malaria, neglected tropical disease, HIV, tuberculosis, and strengthening public health infrastructure systems. I would also talk about the importance of measuring progress to make sure that our work is critical that we are having impact in what we are doing and that we are using data. CDC is a data driven organization and we rely on our data to help us make continuous improvement, to have real time data to use to make evidence based decisions. And this is something that has also come through in the work that I have done in immunization and HIV. Innovations are also critical in programs in immunization trying to make sure that we have vaccinated every child with polio. It was required continuous innovations. How do we make sure that the health care workers are vaccinating? How do we make sure that the parents or guardians are accepting vaccine? How do we make sure that the vaccine getting into children is a safe and viable vaccine? All of these require the importance of innovation on a daily basis in management, in logistics, and in vaccines and the science and the research required. Lastly I would say in my role, the importance of communication and sharing information is so critical in the partnerships as I mentioned in how we do our work. The value of making sure that we can communicate what we are doing, how we are collaborating, and ensuring as well that we are informing the public, especially the U.S public of what we are doing with taxpayer’s dollars, is really critical in the work that I do.

https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/countries/rwanda/mp3/Dr-Martin_01__NR.MP3