WHO-EIOS team visits China CDC

The team of Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources of the World Health Organization (WHO-EIOS) visited the Changping Campus of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) on May 15, and held talks with Shen Hongbing, director of the China CDC. 

 

Qi Xiaopeng, deputy director of the Center for Global Public Health at the China CDC, presided over the meeting.

 

Dr. Philip AbdelMalik, director of the WHO-EIOS, introduced the organizational structure and priority activities of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. The institution was established in Berlin, Germany in September 2021, under the WHO Health Emergencies Programme.

 

The pandemic hub works closely with member states and WHO regional and country offices to strengthen data-sharing capabilities and co-create tools to gather and analyze data for early warning surveillance.

 

Priority activities for the pandemic hub mainly include cooperative partner development, open-source epidemic intelligence systems, public health intelligence capacity building, international pathogen surveillance networks, and global leadership lecture series.

 

Shen introduced the key tasks and priority areas of China's disease control system reform, one important task among which is to improve public health event monitoring and intelligent early warning capabilities.

 

Shen said that the China CDC hopes to strengthen cooperation with the WHO to hold personnel capacity building and technical experience exchange activities in open-source intelligence monitoring and early warning source intelligence for global epidemics.

 

The two parties reached a consensus on priorities of future cooperation. They agreed to take full advantage of the WHO EIOS platform to carry on with global disease surveillance, facilitate business contacts and exchanges between China CDC and WHO as well as its Representative Office in China and Western Pacific office, and carry out online and offline trainings to improve monitoring and early warning capabilities of its team.

 

Qi thanked WHO as well as its Representative Office in China and Western Pacific office and the EIOS team for their strong support of China in his conclusion speech, and announced a plan for the first EIOS training session for disease control personnel to be held in Beijing.