For Immediate Release
Press Release
DANANG, March 29, 2024 – Today, the United States Mission to Vietnam, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), joined Vietnam’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) and Department of Animal Health (DAH) to celebrate the success of USAID’s Infectious Disease Surveillance and Detection project, which has worked in partnership with NIHE, DAH and others since 2020 to improve diagnostic networks and surveillance for known and emerging diseases.
Known and emerging infectious diseases pose significant threats to global health security, making it critical to have in place stable and effective diagnostic and surveillance systems. Working in five provinces (Binh Dinh, Can Tho, Dong Thap, Khanh Hoa, and Thai Nguyen), the project has piloted effective models to strengthen Vietnam’s ability to diagnose and detect priority diseases and operate real-time based surveillance systems, helping to prevent the spread of pathogens, prevent and mitigate the scale of epidemics, and respond quickly to reduce morbidity and mortality.
“USAID is proud to support the GVN to strengthen Vietnam’s core public health capacities to effectively prevent, detect, and respond to epidemic-prone emerging infectious diseases, and other public health events at all levels, through a One Health approach. We hope that USAID- supported activities, such as expanding use of the Vietnam Animal Health Information system to the district level, and the specimen transport system the project created, will be sustained and replicated after the project ends,” said USAID/Vietnam Office of Health Director Randolph Augustin.
The project worked with NIHE and other partners to develop and pilot the first specimen transport system in Vietnam that serves both the human and animal health diagnostic networks. The project standardized operating procedures for specimen transport through this system. As a result, this system is now able to improve biosafety and biosecurity during transportation, reduce transportation time, and ensure specimen quality. To increase the use of the Vietnam Animal Health Information System, an online disease reporting system designed to enable real-time reporting of animal diseases and zoonotic diseases, the project helped develop a mobile application to make it easier to report animal diseases, especially at provincial and district levels. In addition, the project has helped strengthen surveillance of health-related events through timely detection and response to early signals, e.g, many sick people with the same symptoms in one area, and a big number of poultry deaths (event-based surveillance).
USAID’s Infectious Disease Surveillance and Detection project is part of the U.S. government’s efforts to advance the Global Health Security Agenda, a worldwide effort to help build countries' capacity to create a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats and elevate global health security as a national and global priority.
For project and closeout event photos, visit: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBiWeW
For more information about USAID’s health work in Vietnam, please visit https://www.usaid.gov/vietnam/health or contact Nguyen Thac Phuong, Communications Specialist at USAID/Vietnam; Tel: 0977 253 071; Email: phuongnguyen@usaid.gov