At the launching ceremony (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology on October 20 launched the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) office, aiming to collect information of epidemics in 28 northern provinces to build a national database and give warning of unusual epidemic signs.
The centre, which is connected with the international EOC, is built with the support of the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with an objective to improve the capacity of detecting and coping with global health risks.
The support is part of the CDC’s Global Health Security Agenda starting from July 2014, which has covered 50 countries across the world. Along with assistance in technology and finance, the CDC also helped the centre in personnel training.
According to Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, Vietnam is located in a hot spot of communicable diseases and is affected by speedy population increase and urbanisation, migration and climate change. This has led to more occurrences and transmissions of diseases, especially newly-emerging dangerous ones, he added.
The official stressed that the operation of the centre at the institute is among specific activities to be taken by Vietnam in implementing its commitments to the Global Health Security Agenda.
It is the second milestone in the process of building a national EOC in Vietnam, which is expected to collect and analyse data of epidemics from different sources and make plans to respond to urgent epidemic situation, said Long.
He also expressed hope that with the assistance of the US Government, the CDC and international organisations, other EOCs will be set up in the Pasteur Institutes in Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang, the Central Highlands region and at localities, forming a complete network to actively deal with public health incidents.-VNA
