GHSA in Action Stories

A severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2002-2003, which affected more than 8,000 people in 29 countries and cost the world more than $40 billion, exposed how fragile countries are in the face of a disease…

We cannot effectively stop epidemics without critical information from labs. In an outbreak, laboratory testing can help quickly and accurately pinpoint the cause, monitor treatment, and guide the response…

When infectious diseases strike, getting a fast and accurate laboratory diagnosis is critical to stopping an outbreak from becoming a widespread epidemic…

In Vietnam, rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are among the highest in Asia, with multi-drug-resistant infections causing thousands of deaths annually…

In March 2017, a mystery illness struck in Tanzania. In the village of Kajana, children at Munyika Primary School began to get sick. First a few, then a few dozen, and then more than 100 children reported symptoms that included headache, abdominal pain, and fever…

With support from CDC and partners through the Global Health Security Agenda, Uganda is responding faster than ever to contain outbreaks at the source…

In 2014-2015, Liberia suffered more than 10,000 cases of Ebola and over 4,800 Ebola-related deaths. It took the country months to mount an effective response to the epidemic, as needed public health systems had to be built in the face of the expanding crisis…

Disease detectives know that data can save lives. This is why three CDC-trained disease detectives from Sierra Leone’s Frontline Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP-Frontline) searched the country’s treasure troves of surveillance data on diseases like tuberculosis, Lassa fever, and acute flaccid paralysis (which is associated with polio)…

Sometimes, the most valuable resources in detecting an outbreak are the people closest to it. Arming community health workers and other local leaders with the information they need to make decisions about when and how an illness should be reported is an important measure in controlling outbreaks before they have a chance to spread…

Over the past two years, Pakistan has significantly increased its ability to investigate and respond to outbreaks of deadly but preventable diseases like measles, pertussis, and diphtheria…

Laboratories are a critical link between a patient and their diagnosis — when people are ill, laboratories can confirm the reason. When local facilities don’t have the resources to test specimens from patients, they use a specimen referral chain to send samples to laboratories that may be far away, but which have the ability to run the necessary tests…

When local fishermen in Uganda spotted a massive die-off of migratory birds, it raised an alarm for the country. In January 2017, in the Lake Victoria island and lakeshore districts of Kalangala, Masaka, and Wakiso, about 10,000 white-winged black terns died unexpectedly, and health experts needed to find out why…

Health care workers at Cameroon’s Laquintinie Regional Hospital in Douala evaluate and treat actors and mannequins displaying symptoms of choleraon Sept. 13 as part of a simulation testing the country’s improved ability to detect and respond to disease outbreaks.

Three years ago, Ebola in a remote area in Guinea spread and grew into the world’s first epidemic of the virus. We quickly saw that the most effective way to stop infectious diseases from spreading was to involve the whole community. Now Guinea is applying lessons from the Ebola response, including engaging in community outreach, building triage centers at…

Ebola taught us how easily a deadly disease can spread worldwide if there are no effective surveillance and response systems to detect and control disease outbreaks at the source.

Stopping a contagious illness often requires detective work, like that of the father of modern epidemiology, Dr. John Snow. In 1854 Dr. Snow, applying disease detection techniques, identified a well in the Soho district of London as the source of a cholera outbreak and removed the pump handle on the well to stop the outbreak…

In Western Ghats and other similar regions in India, smaller, remote hospitals often have to either wait weeks for test results from larger district labs or send patients on long, bumpy bus rides to hospitals with more advanced lab capabilities…

Time is of the essence to prevent clusters of illness from turning into disease outbreaks. Public health workers can take action to prevent the spread of disease, and thereby prevent illnesses and deaths, when authorities are alerted quickly about a disease occurrence. When Ebola struck in 2014, Sierra Leone lacked an effective infectious disease reporting system…

FETP trains field epidemiologists around the world, giving them the skills to collect, analyze, and interpret data to make decisions that can save lives. To keep the world safe from devastating diseases like Ebola, well-trained disease detectives are needed in every country to detect and contain diseases before they spread…

Tanzania is filling in the gaps of its health facility-based disease surveillance system to rapidly detect outbreaks by leveraging existing local community structures. Recently, the country successfully piloted an initiative to train community health workers (CHWs) and health care workers (HCWs) in community-based disease surveillance (CBDS) so they can help improve disease detection, prevention, and control at the community level…

As we learned from HIV, Ebola, and other scary microbes, testing a patient’s bodily fluids can be dangerous – even deadly. For laboratory workers who handle these fluids every day, the risk is real and immediate…

Imagine a gathering larger than the upcoming Olympics in Rio. But instead of descending upon a city, millions of religious pilgrims build their own temporary metropolis of tents along the riverside, waiting their turn to take a dip in the holy waters behind the thousands of sadus, or holy men, who lead the procession to the riverbank before sunrise…

When too few people are protected by vaccines, deadly illnesses can erupt and target the most vulnerable – especially children. Outbreaks of childhood diseases like measles, diphtheria, and pertussis are preventable with vaccines, but not everyone has easy access to get them. …

Vietnam is creating a network of EOCs to monitor disease transmission data in real time, bringing outbreak detection and response closer to the source. Each EOC in the network will act as a nerve center for epidemic intelligence, mobilizing responses to public health threats and coordinating with ministries in emergencies. Four interlinked regional EOCs will be able to communicate and share data directly with Vietnam’s national EOC and with international partners…

A parent hears rumors from other parents about several children bitten by a rabid dog. A teacher sees an unusually high number of children absent from school and hears that they all have similar symptoms. It could be a coincidence. It could be a local disease outbreak. Or it could be the first signs of an epidemic…

Assisting with outbreaks usually requires travelling light. But sometimes it requires hauling heavy equipment across the world. When CDC experts were asked by Ghana to assist with a meningitis outbreak, they arrived lugging a PCR machine, an instrument used in a laboratory that can confirm disease diagnoses through molecular detection. The team had carried the machine all the way from their lab in Atlanta…

Cameroon is taking lessons learned from previous outbreaks to shorten response times through their newly developed Emergency Operations Center, which serves as a role model for global health security success. In one year, experts reduced response time to a health emergency from 8 weeks to one week. When Cameroon’s EOC was activated for the first time in response to a cholera outbreak, it took more than eight weeks…

Georgia is the first country to take on the challenge of completely eliminating Hepatitis C (HCV) and they’re using a team of international disease detectives to find out how it’s spreading. Teams overcame language and navigation challenges, going door-to-door in remote areas to gather information. Survey results are already informing national strategy: Experts assumed that HCV in Georgia could be traced back to…

During the Ebola epidemic, disease detectives from the Democratic Republic of Congo brought contact-tracing expertise to Guinea to help find and stop the disease. The DRC has its own history with Ebola, having faced one short-lived outbreak in 1976 and another in the mid-90s. When Ebola briefly returned again in the summer of 2014, a trained team of field epidemiologists helped swiftly put a stop to the outbreak, limiting it to 66 cases…

India is improving its ability to detect one of its most common killers: acute diarrheal disease. Epidemiologists, microbiologists, lab technicians, and healthcare staff have been trained and mentored on procedures for stool specimen collection, transport, laboratory testing, and reporting. In just two years, more than 30 outbreaks have been detected and reported in four pilot districts across Tamil Nadu and Gujarat; 2000 samples have been properly collected, transported, and tested. Clinical specimens were tested in 75% of those outbreaks, bringing results on par with some of the best standards in the world…

As part of a large-scale project to modernize Kazakhstan’s outdated laboratories, the “stepwise” laboratory improvement process is producing immediate and measurable results. Over 15 months of stepwise training, five laboratories were transformed. Each now has a designated quality manager and biosafety officer who teach staff how to meet requirements and do their jobs better. Participating laboratories offer targeted training to other facilities within their region, spreading improvement grassroots-style, one facility at a time…

A field epidemiology training program called FETP STEP, which was put in place to address the Ebola outbreak, turned out to also be key in thwarting a potentially devastating outbreak of polio. In September 2015, a 19-month-old child from Guinea crossed the border into Mali with a case of vaccine-derived polio. Drawing on his training, an FETP STEP graduate led surveillance and investigation in the affected district. Through contact tracing, he found that seven other children had been in contact with the child and would need close monitoring. CDC-trained personnel also worked with the Ministry of Health to launch an emergency vaccination campaign in Bamako and surrounding areas, and helped increase monitoring at the border…

Nigeria’s success in containing the Ebola outbreak to just 19 cases in two cities was due to surveillance and response systems already in place. A strong trained workforce through the Field Epidemiology Program (FETP) helped identify and isolate potential cases of Ebola. CDC responders joined 13 Nigerian FETP trainees and 40 FETP graduates to halt the outbreak within three generations of transmission…

Senegal’s new Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is starting to be recognized as a model in the region. Dr. Abdoulaye Bousso, the Coordinator of Senegal’s EOC, has been telling colleagues from Ministries of Health across Africa that they need to have an emergency operations center. The World Health Organization has invited Dr. Bousso to Mauritania to help establish an EOC there. Our strategy, says Dr. Bousso, has been “to work and to show them something real with results.” Their results are getting noticed…

FETP first took root outside of North America in Thailand as a partnership with the country’s Ministry of Health. In the last 35 years, Thailand’s FETP has helped tackle some of the most lethal public health threats in the region, including HIV, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), botulism, malaria, and the 2009 influenza pandemic. FETP residents were instrumental in identifying high-risk populations for HIV infection in the early days of the AIDS epidemic in Thailand…

Welcoming people into a country without welcoming the spread of infectious diseases can be tricky. Thailand is watching for outbreaks along its borders, using advanced molecular detection and a network of laboratories to provide fast and accurate results on dengue, Zika, and other infectious diseases. In hospitals and clinics along the Thai border, staff from the Ministry of Health identify patients with fever, collect clinical information, transport and test samples, and provide results back to clinicians…