Jun 29, 2010
SHANGHAI - AMERICAN and Shanghai health authorities opened an epidemiology centre in the Chinese city on Tuesday to train experts in sleuthing out ways to prevent chronic and epidemic diseases.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is helping with training and technical assistance at the centre that will be 'driven by what are the major public health issues in this country,' said CDC deputy director Stephen B. Thacker.
'We need more field epidemiologists in China and around the world and we need them better trained,' Mr Thacker told The Associated Press.
Outbreaks of SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome) and bird flu since 2003, and last year's swine flu epidemic have driven home the rising risks from new diseases or deadly mutations of epidemic ailments, especially in developing countries that may lack the infrastructure to cope with them before they get out of hand.
Earlier joint research in field epidemiology helped identify routes of infection for some of those ailments. Some of the work has been related not to epidemics but to unexplained illness and deaths. Experts traced mysterious clusters of deaths in south-west China's Yunnan province to consumption of certain wild mushrooms. Research into cases of paralysis among leukemia patients prompted the recall of unsafe medicines.
Mr Thacker said they also need more experts in the broad areas of public health, not just communicable diseases. 'We need to look at what's killing people, what's putting people in hospitals. Here in Shanghai, the leading causes of death are not infections, they're heart disease, stroke, injuries, cancer and so on,' he said. Wang Longxing, director of the Shanghai city Health Bureau, said the government is starting to invest more in prevention. -- AP
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