Establishment of Global Disease Detection (GDD) Regional Centre at NCDC, Delhi

The NCDC has recently developed a partnership with the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Global Disease Detection (GDD) Programme to establish a GDD Regional Centre in India, Delhi.  India was named as the newest Global Disease Detection Site.  A high level visit to India by leadership from CDC resulted in the preparation of a memorandum of understanding signed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.  This will lead to long term public health collaboration between the Government of India and the United States in the following areas:

• Support in developing and expanding emerging infectious disease detection and response
• Support in disease detection, outbreak investigations and response
• Transfer of technology for identifying newer pathogens
• Training field epidemiologists and enhance laboratory methodologies to achieve above objectives on long term basis
• Support in pandemic preparedness and response
• Expanding zoonotic disease investigation and control
• Building capacity for risk communications and information technology
• Support in improvement of laboratory systems and bio-safety
• Advancing public health via networking with partners to share latest protocols and best practices

Amongst these, precedence is proposed to be given to:

1. Establishing high quality research and surveillance on important human infectious diseases with an emphasis on priority diseases within the IDSP network, applying new or enhanced laboratory diagnostic techniques to better define and understand the disease symptoms being reported to NCDC.
2. Establishing an Indian EIS (Epidemiological Intelligence System) programme, to enhance existing epidemiology response capacity for the country.
3. Strengthening the institutional capacity of NCDC to conduct research, plan, implement and evaluate public heath programmes, provide surveillance and develop interventions as well as support national and regional infectious disease identification and control efforts through direct partnership between NCDC and CDC staff in research, programme and operations support efforts and through training on laboratory, epidemiology and outbreak response.

It is anticipated that CDC will provide technical support for all phases of this cooperative agreement, including stationing staff in India in specific technical roles as and when required.  Similarly GDD will extend all cooperation in implementing this cooperative agreement.  NCDC will make decisions about overall priorities if required in consultation with CDC.