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 met with the Director General Shen Hongbing. The Center for Global Public Health and the Office of International Cooperation of China CDC participated the meeting.

 

Qi Xiaopeng, acting director of the Center for Global Public Health, presided over the meeting.

 

Dr. Philip AbdelMalik, team lead and project authority 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 was to improve public health event-based surveillance and intelligent early warning capabilities.

 

Shen said that China CDC hoped to strengthen cooperation with WHO to hold personnel capacity building and technical experience exchange activities on epidemic intelligence surveillance and early warning from open source.

 

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

 

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