Islamabad, September 3, 2009 - The U.S. government is helping to improve the capacity of the Pakistani health system to fight deadly diseases such as malaria by providing grants to train health professionals to control the spread of disease in collaboration with regional neighbors facing similar threats to the health of their nations.

Ms. Janet Paz-Castillo, Director of the Health Office at U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) along with Dr. Rashid Jooma, Director General, Ministry of Health, Government of Pakistan inaugurated a 12-month postgraduate diploma program in Medical Entomology and Disease Vector Control for health professionals.

"Pakistan and its neighboring sub-tropical countries suffer from various vector-borne diseases such as Malaria, plague, dengue fever, and leishmaniasis that tend to resurge with deadly results," said Ms. Paz-Castillo. "The U.S. Government believes that prevention and control of these diseases should be a national priority for Pakistan.

The program, implemented by Health Services Academy in collaboration with World Health Organization (WHO), will train health professionals in vector-borne disease control. The program will train a group of 20 students in the first year and a greater number in the coming years who would work on the district level while collaborating with the regional disease vector control programs in neighboring countries.

"We are proud that this postgraduate diploma course in Medical Entomology and Disease Vector Control is part of our grant support to the Health Services Academy as an effort to improve health systems in becoming more responsive to the needs of the country," said Ms. Paz-Castillo.

Pakistan, like its sub-tropical neighbors is at a greater risk of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, Cutaneous, Visceral Leishmaniasis and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF) that spread because of insect-bites.Support for this project is part of the more than $3.4 billion in aid that the U.S. government is providing to Pakistan over five years to improve economic growth, education, health and governance and to assist with earthquake reconstruction.