WELCOME to 2008’s first quarter Global Health 

E-Brief, designed to inform readers about key global 

health activities at the Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention (CDC). 

Our first issue of the year focuses on efforts to 

harmonize national global public health priorities 

across the U.S. Government and other public-private 

partnerships through Global Health Engagement—a 

strategic approach to leverage U.S. public health 

capabilities in support of equity, security, diplomacy, 

trade, development and the environment. 

Co-authored with our interagency partners, this issue 

highlights Project Horizon, an ongoing interagency 

strategic planning process bringing greater cohesion 

to federal agencies with international mandates. This 

issue also features activities that exemplify Global Health 

Engagement, and a plan to chart its success.

The Spirit of Engagement

Already a recognized global public health leader through 

its work in smallpox eradication and global malaria and 

measles control, CDC continues to invest in cross-sector 

global health strategies and partnerships. Increasingly, 

CDC is partnering with federal agencies with growing 

interests, mandates, and unique capabilities in global 

health. 

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief 

(PEPFAR), administered through the Office of the Global 

AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), set the standard for a USG-wide 

approach when it formalized the response to the global 

HIV/AIDS pandemic. 

The remarkable progress to date would not have 

been possible without hard won unity between federal 

agencies, including USAID, HHS (HRSA, NIH, CDC, SAMHSA, 

FDA), and U.S. Departments of State, Defense, Labor and 

Commerce, and the Peace Corps. Interagency efforts are 

First Quarter 2008

CDC Global Health 

E-Brief

Building USG Interagency Collaboration

Through Global Health Engagement 

No matter what the future looks like, the U.S. 

Government will have to be engaged in a serious 

and direct way in global health.

Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services 

IN THIS ISSUE

The Spirit of Engagement

Engagement Through Biosurveillance

Engagement and Diplomacy

Laboratory Networks and Engagement

“Healthy Water” Engagement Saves Lives

Measuring and Evaluating Engagement

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also underway in water and sanitation, malaria, polio, 

global disease detection, maternal and child health, 

refugee and environmental health, and other essential 

global health domains. 

As additional agencies participate in global 

health activities, there is an increasing call for 

a more integrated and competency-based 

approach by all sectors related to health. 

Harnessing the capability of multiple 

disciplines with a shared global health 

mission will necessitate greater unity 

between U.S. agencies and help to 

create synergy, rather than duplication 

of efforts. 

Global Health Engagement 

promotes this possibility. It is a “whole 

of government” approach to advance 

the global health agenda through fully 

recognizing and utilizing USG resources 

to achieve greater security, increased 

equity, an improved economy, and 

more effective public health 

diplomacy. This initiative, driven by 

USG agencies with common global 

health aims, was devised through 

Project Horizon, an overarching strategic plan to build 

greater cooperation and harmony between agencies with 

global activities and related goals. 

Project Horizon was initiated in 2006 through the 

Department of State’s Office of Strategic and Performance 

Planning, together with the Departments of Homeland 

Security and Defense, and several other agency partners. 

The purpose was to develop realistic interagency 

strategies and identify capabilities in which the nation 

should invest to best prepare for unforeseen threats and 

opportunities over the next 20 years. 

CDC Director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, represented CDC 

and was joined by senior leaders and executives from 

14 departments and U.S. government agencies. An 

Interagency Strategic Planning Group (ISPG) was convened 

at the conclusion of the project’s first phase. Leaders from 

each agency are part of an ongoing effort to guide the 

interagency process into the future through realizing 

Project Horizon’s top 10 interagency capabilities. 

Of these top 10, Global Health Engagement was one 

of the most robust of Project Horizon’s recommended 

initiatives. “There are two characteristics that distinguish 

the Global Health Engagement construct,” said Rudolph 

Lohmeyer, Senior Advisor for Long Term 

Planning at the Department of State and 

co-lead for the Project Horizon ISPG. 

“First, it is founded upon a broad, 

multidimensional definition of public 

health including the health-related 

aspects of agriculture, commerce, 

the environment, and transportation, 

and the broad population-based 

benefits that biomedical research 

yields. Second, it enables the U.S. 

government to mobilize nontraditional as well as traditional global 

public health resources in a strategic 

and truly interagency fashion so that 

we can better address emerging 

international health threats and 

advance our public diplomacy as a 

leader in humanitarian assistance.”

In November 2007, CDC’s 

Washington D.C. office held the 

first Project Horizon ISPG meeting devoted to Global 

Health Engagement with 11 government agencies 

represented. The group recognized the tremendous 

potential in existing interagency relationships and agreed 

upon the strategic importance of engaging over global 

health. Delegates made a commitment to advance a 

broad-based interagency strategy and tactical plan for 

Global Health Engagement. 

A core leadership group from HHS (including CDC), 

Defense, EPA, State, USDA, and USAID has constructed a 

strategic framework that links global health objectives to 

the National Security Strategy. Guided by this framework, 

the group has proposed ideas for joint projects around 

water and sanitation, malnutrition, and high-priority 

diseases that leverage the entire spectrum of interagency 

abilities to achieve success.” It would be impossible to 

move this initiative forward without the commitment, 

expertise, and energy of these interagency leaders”, 

said Alison Kelly from CDC, who has been with Project 

Horizon from the beginning and leads the Global Health 

Engagement component.

This team spirit is essential as the core group 

begins the difficult work of blending the complexities 

and sometimes competing priorities of each agency’s 

investments in global health. A “whole of government” 

effort, and not any one agency, will be the key to Global 

Health Engagement’s long-term success.

The CDC Global Health E-Brief is produced quarterly by the Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Coordinating Office for Global Health (COGH). To 

find out more about CDC and COGH, go to www.cdc.gov and www.cdc.gov/cogh. 

A Scenario-Based Approach to

Interagency Strategic Planning
Engagement Through Biosurveillance 

Situated on the tree-lined campus of Georgetown 

University’s Medical Center in Washington, D.C., is Project 

Argus, one of the nation’s premier biosurveillance systems 

for detecting and tracking early indicators of, and warnings 

about, international biological events. Argus exemplifies 

real-time global health engagement taking place between 

academia and federal government agencies tasked with 

the critical mission of protecting domestic and global 

public health, and national security. 

Argus’ primary function is to alert CDC, and other 

users, to biological events that may require a public health 

response. The system monitors media and other electronic 

sources at the local level around the globe for three types 

of indicators: reports of disease outbreaks, potential 

environmental triggers, and social disruption. Since it 

began operations in July 2007, Argus has logged more 

than 30,000 biological events involving pathogens such 

as avian influenza, Ebola virus, cholera, and other unusual 

pathogens that have caused varying states of social 

disruption throughout the world. Argus currently accesses 

more than 1 million pieces of information daily, and 

produces, on average, 200 reports per day. Argus covers 

all the countries officially recognized by the United States. 

Analysts are collectively fluent in 36 languages. 

 Critical to Argus’ strategic biosurveillance capability is 

the federal partnership of CDC’s Global Disease Detection 

Operations Center; USDA’s Centers for Epidemiology and 

Animal Health; DHS’ National Biosurveillance Integration 

Center; the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center; 

other Intelligence Community organizations; the Defense 

Threat Reduction Agency; and the U.S. Strategic Command 

Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

These agencies comprise the Biological Indication and 

Warning Analytic Community (BIWAC), a biosurveillance 

community that proactively sets into motion deployment 

of countermeasures to threats, initiated through Argus’ 

warning capability. The BIWAC is further engaged through 

an additional information-sharing infrastructure that 

allows tactical, real-time unclassified dialogue between 

Argus and BIWAC agencies. This “relational” capability is 

increasingly utilized by federal agencies who must rapidly 

respond to biologic threats anywhere in the world. 

The strong USG agency ties developed through Argus 

and the BIWAC helped to identify laboratory collection 

difficulties in response to a recent outbreak in Tbilisi, 

Georgia, of African swine fever (ASF), a highly contagious 

disease affecting pigs that, unchecked, can spread rapidly 

and cause crippling economic consequences. The USDA 

–Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (FADDL), 

which conducts international animal disease diagnostic 

testing, including test development and validation, and 

strain verification and banking, sent two staff members to 

assist in the outbreak. The Georgian laboratory, sponsored 

by a participating agency in the 

BIWAC, successfully identified the 

strain as ASF, but denied the request 

by USDA-FADDL to transport viral 

samples to the United States for 

additional analysis due to confusion 

over international transportation 

logistics and protocols. The BIWAC 

is actively engaged in addressing 

these obstacles. 

Lessons learned will facilitate 

more timely transportation of 

samples to USDA laboratories 

in the future by expediting 

navigation of protocol restrictions 

on removal of such pathogens 

from foreign laboratories. The 

combination of Argus’ timely and 

effective warning capability and its 

closely linked network of federal 

agencies committed to establishing 

interagency best practices marked 

a critical turning point in USDA’s 

decision to use the Argus system. 

Argus’ capabilities are now being 

studied for potential application to 

other national security issues.

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Engagement and Diplomacy

Global health continues to assume a greater role in our 

nation’s foreign policy agenda—demanding greater 

policy insight, knowledge, and a more skilled diplomatic 

presence overseas. Patricia Murphy, a senior Foreign 

Service Officer at the Department of State and current 

Director of the Office of International Health and 

Biodefense (IHB) in the Bureau of Oceans, Environment 

and Science, isn’t surprised. She has been committed to 

and recognized the potential for the interface between 

health and diplomacy since her career began in 1981. 

“When I arrived in Bamako, Mali, to begin my 

first Foreign Service assignment, I had just come 

from a graduate program in animal genetics with an 

undergraduate degree in biology. I was surprised to find 

Bamako filled with people who were sick with diseases 

which I recognized, but had assumed were eradicated. The 

many street beggars in Bamako at that time were usually 

lepers, or blind (in many cases due to onchocerciasis) or 

physically disabled (often as a result of polio infections). 

Malaria and dysentery were endemic and common, even 

in urban areas. As I tried to make sense of what I saw, 

the Embassy Medical Officer and USAID health program 

officers pointed me toward the CDC publication Morbidity 

and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) as a useful resource. 

I subscribed right away, and have continued to read 

MMWR for over 25 years. Despite merciless teasing from 

colleagues for my interest in morbidity and mortality, 

I have a much fuller understanding of the context and 

science surrounding the health problems plaguing the 

developing countries where I served. This knowledge has 

enabled me to jump right into the complicated health 

policy issues on which I work in my current position. When 

our office handles a portion of global health policy work, 

my colleagues and I find it extremely gratifying.”

The role of IHB’s Bureau of Oceans, Environment 

and Science is one of interagency and international 

coordination and consultation to further the nation’s 

strength in global health diplomacy. The Bureau 

works with a range of government agencies to change 

health status in developing countries. IHB coordinates 

international health policy for the interagency community 

and serves as a conduit for health information to and from 

U.S. embassies and consulates. 

One example of this work is through engagement with 

USAID and HHS over polio. IHB worked closely with these 

agencies to advocate for USG diplomatic support of polio 

eradication. As a result, the Department of State helped to 

raise millions of dollars from allied governments in direct 

support of polio vaccination campaigns in Africa and 

South Asia. 

In addition, the Department of State provided 

diplomatic support to negotiated cease-fires to 

enable vaccination campaigns in conflict-ridden areas. 

Public health professionals have in some instances 

been escorted by armed guards to accomplish polio 

vaccination campaigns. Success has been born out with an 

announcement 

from the Global 

Polio Eradication 

Initiative on 

March 25 that 

polio has been 

eradicated from 

Somalia, leaving 

only four more 

countries in 

which polio is 

endemic. 

Murphy 

said that her office was fortunate to have the assistance 

of CDC/United States Public Health Service Officer, Dr. 

Daniel Miller, who was on detail to IHB to coordinate much 

of the interagency polio work. ”I believe he developed a 

degree of respect for diplomatic engagement while he 

was with us, as I know the Department of State benefited 

tremendously from having a professional public health 

officer in our midst. In 2007, just over 1,000 polio cases 

were reported worldwide—a massive reduction from the 

more than 350,000 polio cases per year that the world had 

to deal with in the 1950s. Clearly, this was a multi-country, 

multi-agency effort and included non-governmental 

organizations. We are proud to have played a part in this 

very important work.” 

To expand the nation’s interagency capability in Global 

Health Diplomacy, the University of California’s Institute 

on Global Conflict and Cooperation and CDC will host a 

course on Global Health Diplomacy in Washington D.C. 

this summer. During an intensive five-day program, a small 

group of participants from around the world will engage 

with faculty of global health diplomats. 

Under the leadership of renowned global health 

experts, the class will share views and professional 

experiences from their own context of work. CDC 

is making several openings available to Project 

Horizon’s interagency group to advance Global Health 

Engagement’s reliance on global health diplomacy.

Laboratory Networks and Engagement 

How can Rwanda, an African country recovering from a 

long history of intermittent war, including devastating 

genocide, construct a well-designed public health 

laboratory system—capable of handling dangerous 

pathogens—in two years? 

“We are building a house one brick at a time,” said 

Helen Perry, a CDC training specialist who coordinates the 

agency’s Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response 

(IDSR) activities with USAID, the World Health Organization 

Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO), and African 

Ministries of Health. “In IDSR, we systematically focus on 

each level of the health system by finding best practices 

in a country and sharing them with the rest of the 

African region. The laboratory network in Rwanda is one 

example of how resources can be integrated to create a 
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functional laboratory system linking district and provincial 

laboratories with the national reference lab in Kigali that 

performs the highest level of testing and biosecurity.” 

The Rwandan lab group, in collaboration with USAID 

and CDC’s Global AID’s Program (GAP), began in 2003. 

In a matter of two years, and by strategically leveraging 

their donor funds, the group created a national laboratory 

system able to collect, transport, safely handle, sort, and 

process specimens for communicable diseases, including 

bacterial pathogens. 

Since 1998, CDC has worked closely with USAID 

and WHO-AFRO to improve national surveillance and 

laboratory capacity in African countries. This collaboration 

for integrated disease surveillance was motivated by 

a series of outbreaks of meningococcal meningitis, 

yellow fever, cholera, and viral hemorrhagic fevers that 

devastated African communities during the 1990s. 

These outbreaks highlighted the critical need for 

time-sensitive functional surveillance systems capable of 

detecting, confirming, and responding to disease threats in 

Africa. Earlier detection of these deadly diseases through a 

functioning public health laboratory network could have 

reduced the number of cases and deaths associated with 

the outbreaks. Without CDC’s partnership with USAID, the 

dissemination of IDSR’s ability to accelerate and amplify 

life-saving interventions to African countries would not 

have been possible. 

“What makes IDSR 

a satisfying initiative,” 

said CDC’s Perry, “is 

working in tandem 

with USAID, African 

countries, regional WHO 

partners and other CDC 

programs, including 

the Field Epidemiology 

and Laboratory 

Training Program 

(FELTP). Together, 

we have developed 

and implemented 

prototypical laboratory 

systems in low-resource 

settings capable of reducing the number of cases and 

deaths associated with deadly disease outbreaks.” 

Rwanda’s model laboratory network was successful for 

three reasons:

 High-level political commitment and national-level 

health ministry leadership 

 Well-defined reporting requirements communicated 

to laboratories in the system 

 Quality control through the National Reference 

Laboratory 

Because of Rwanda’s impressive laboratory growth, 

the USAID-funded partners (CDC and WHO-AFRO) 

chose it as the location to field test implementation of 

similar networks in other African countries. A remaining 

challenge is to ensure a reliable workforce of welltrained laboratorians to perform duties at all levels of the 

network. To accomplish this, the partners are preparing a 

comprehensive workforce training strategy for integrating 

IDSR into applied training programs throughout Africa, 

and increasing in-service computer-based instruction.

“This is one of the few initiatives that was rapidly 

adopted and owned by National African Governments,” 

concluded Mary Harvey, who works at USAID/Bureau 

for Africa as the grant manager for WHO-AFRO and CDC. 

“Results 10 years later have shown important declines 

in case fatality rates for meningitis, cholera, and other 

epidemic-prone diseases. The focus on laboratory 

strengthening was critical; government ownership and the 

close collaboration between CDC and WHO have been the 

keys to progress.”

 “Healthy Water” Engagement Saves Lives 

Access to safe drinking water and sanitation is a 

fundamental need of civil society. Yet in the developing 

world, the lack of clean water is a prime contributor to 

global health inequity—trapping whole communities 

in a vicious cycle of ill health, death, lost economic 

opportunity, and instability. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20 

percent of the world’s population lacks access to adequate 

supplies of safe drinking water. With rapid population 

growth, especially in developing countries, access will 

be further strained. An additional 1.6 billion people must 

gain entry to safe water and sanitation by 2015 in order 

to meet the Millennium Development Goal Ensuring 

Environmental Sustainability. Perhaps nowhere is the need 

for governmental and non-governmental engagement 

more critical. 

Taking action to meet this challenge, CDC, the U.S. 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Pan 

American Health Organization (PAHO-WHO) constructed 

a joint strategy on environmental health-related issues in 

the Caribbean and Latin America. Central to this strategy 

for water-related programs is their vision of a world where 

everyone can turn on a water tap and access clear, clean, 

safe water. 

Together, these partners have leveraged their expertise 

to provide technical advice and training for Water PLUS/

Agua y MÁS, a community-based approach to improve 

health and quality of life through Water Safety Plans (WSP). 

These plans, developed by WHO, are comprehensive 

assessments of every point in the drinking water system 

where contamination might occur, whether the system 

involves small wells, surface water, or large municipal 

water treatment facilities. 

Water PLUS/Agua y MÁS was established to streamline 

many different efforts to provide drinking water in the 

Caribbean and Latin America. Despite a great need for 

safe water systems, these programs lacked the skills and 

technical knowledge to effectively manage or adapt a safe 

water system to a community’s changing needs. 
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Through Water PLUS/Agua y MÁS, communities are 

provided with local solutions that are sustainable and 

affordable. The program focuses on three elements:

 A Water Safety Plan to identify opportunities to 

improve sanitation and hygiene as drinking water is 

transported from source to consumer (a critical period 

in which contamination with bacteria or parasites 

often occurs), 

 Appropriate interventions to protect source waters, 

improve water delivery systems, introduce Safe Water 

Systems, educate people about hygiene, and improve 

sanitation, and 

 Evaluation of the health impact of those interventions 

on consumers’ health and quality of life.

In November 2007, Water PLUS/Agua y MÁS realized 

early success when the Jamaican Minister of Health and 

Environment, Rudyard Spencer, announced that the 

country would swiftly finalize National Drinking Water 

Regulations under the Public Health Act to ensure that 

all Jamaicans have access to a safe and adequate water 

supply. “The gap needs to be closed,” said Spencer. “ In 

rural Jamaica, only 45% of households have access to 

piped water; 23% obtain their supply from sandpipes, 

another 23% from rain water, and 9% from various sources. 

Spencer believes that the WSPs will help Jamaica meet the 

Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion 

of people without sustainable access to safe drinking 

water and basic sanitation by 2015. 

Efforts are underway to use the Water Safety Plan 

developed by Jamaica as a template for the development 

of other plans in the Caribbean and Latin American 

Region. WSPs vary in complexity, as appropriate to the 

situation. Additional Water Safety Plan initiatives are 

in place in Brazil, Bolivia, and Guyana with a variety of 

CDC partners, including the Coca Cola Company, the 

Department of State, the World Bank, the Inter-American 

Development Bank, and Emory University.

Measuring and Evaluating Engagement

In today’s complex global environment, promoting human 

security, health, and development is the order of the day. 

Thus, the U.S. military, in coordination with all other U.S. 

government agencies, seeks 

to execute and evaluate its 

humanitarian assistance 

programs with the same 

diligence it gives to military 

campaigns. 

This new Department 

of Defense policy initiative 

was presented at the first 

Interagency Conference on 

Monitoring and Evaluation 

of DoD Humanitarian Assistance Programs held January 

14–16, 2008, at the Pentagon. 

The Secretary of Defense’s Partnership Strategy Office 

hosted staff from USAID, the Department of State’s Bureau 

of Population, 

Refugees and 

Migration, 

RAND 

Corporation, 

and 

representatives 

from Harvard 

University and 

the Uniformed 

Services 

University of 

the Health 

Sciences. 

Humanitarian 

Assistance 

Program 

Managers from 

every Combatant Command participated.

Attendees agreed improved mechanisms for USG 

interagency communication and coordination are 

required. “We are starving for information in the field—

there is no consistent place to go to find who is doing 

what,” commented one participant. “For example, we 

might show up to build a flood control project in one 

country and find out later another U.S. government 

agency has just completed one on the same river.” 

Equally important was consensus that monitoring 

and evaluation (M&E) needs to be implemented for all 

humanitarian and development assistance programs, 

using similar terms and techniques across U.S. government 

agencies, based on international standards and best 

practices. “When we build a clinic, how will we know if it 

was useful, how the host nation felt about it, or whether 

it was still functioning a year later?” asked another 

participant. “It would be nice to know that what we are 

doing is improving the overall well-being of the host 

nation and is in line with the U.S. government’s overall 

objectives.”

Colonel Gene Bonventre, USAF, conference organizer 

and a leader in Project Horizon’s proposed Global Health 

Engagement initiative summarized, “As DoD strives to 

measure the impact of its 

humanitarian assistance 

programs, it makes sense to 

tap into existing approaches 

and capabilities in the other 

agencies. That will help 

enhance efficiency and 

continuity, and we’ll be one 

step closer to a whole-ofgovernment approach on this 

important issue.” 

Bonventre has been a key point of contact for 

Global Health Engagement, providing relevant global 

health linkages with ongoing interagency work being 

accomplished under many parts of Defense, the 

This country must strengthen other important 

elements of national power both institutionally 

and financially, and create the capability to 

integrate and apply all of the elements of national 

power to problems and challenges abroad.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, November 2007
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Department of State’s Office of the Coordinator for 

Reconstruction and Stabilization, USAID, CDC, and other 

parts of HHS and EPA. He sees Project Horizon as a catalyst 

to synergize the interagency M&E efforts for global health. 

Communication between Project Horizon’s Interagency 

group (ISPG) has been enhanced through the ability to link 

more centrally with the appropriate coordinating bodies 

within each agency. In the case of CDC and Defense, the 

exchange over Global Health Engagement at the strategic 

level has begun to better inform ongoing global health 

work between the agencies at the technical level for 

pandemic influenza, global disease detection, and joint 

humanitarian efforts. 

CDC is committed to promoting 

sustainable public health programs in 

resource-poor countries by building 

local capacity through training 

and infrastructure development. 

CDC fills a unique role in global 

workforce development—particularly 

through support of Ministry of 

Health staff and through training of 

clinical providers, epidemiologists, 

laboratory personnel, and public 

health managers. Several top locallyemployed staff (LE Staff) from CDC’s 

Global AIDS Program (GAP) country 

offices are visiting Atlanta and 

Washington D.C. from March 17–25, 

2008, to participate in one such 

public health management trainings, 

the prestigious CDC Leadership 

and Management Institute 

(LMI). These staff from GAP offices in 

Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, and 

Nigeria, are the first locally-employed 

CDC staff to ever participate in the 

LMI, sponsored by CDC’s Corporate 

University. The aim of their 

participation is to build leadership 

and management capacity of 

foreign service nationals working 

for CDC in the field, and improve the 

overall effectiveness of CDC’s global 

operations. These leaders will also 

meet with Congressional staffers and 

leadership from CDC, HHS, and the 

Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator 

in the Department of State to discuss 

how CDC can improve support for its 

own LE Staff and the global health 

workforce in general. The six staff 

will also present at a briefing at the 

Center for Strategic and International 

Studies on U.S. options for global 

workforce development. This 

briefing will be webcast by the Kaiser 

Family Foundation, at the following 

address: www.kaisernetwork.org/

healthcast/csis/24mar08. Over the 

next year, the LE Staff will apply their 

newly-developed leadership and 

management expertise to a practical 

group project. The team will survey 

CDC LE Staff around the world and 

develop a set of recommendations 

on how CDC can better support its 

LE Staff with an eye toward building 

long-term sustainability of CDC’s 

global operations. 

Update to the Ebola Hemorrhagic 

Fever outbreak in Uganda, reported 

in the December 2007 E-Brief: The 

outbreak was officially declared 

over by the Uganda Ministry of 

Health on February 20, 2008. In 

total, the outbreak caused 149 cases 

and 37 deaths. Laboratory analysis 

conducted by CDC confirmed that the 

virus associated with the outbreak 

was different from the three known 

African Ebola species (Ebola Zaire, 

Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Ivory Coast) 

and should be considered a new 

species of Ebola virus. 

CDC is currently tracking reports 

of a yellow fever outbreak in South 

America involving three countries—

Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. As 

of March 17, 2008, there have been 

approximately 60 confirmed cases 

and 28 deaths. Yellow fever virus 

is transmitted to humans through 

the bite of infected mosquitoes and 

typically occurs in tropical regions of 

Africa and in parts of South America. 

More information about yellow fever 

can be found at CDC’s website: 

www.cdc.gov. 

On Wednesday April 16, 2008, the 

American Red Cross will host a 

panel discussion and reception in 

celebration of the Global Measles 

Initiative. Invitees include current and 

potential measles initiative partners 

including embassy representatives, 

Measles Initiative members, corporate 

development professionals, and 

members of Congress and their staff. 

The event will be held 4:00–6:00 p.m. 

at the Board of Governors Hall, 1730 

E Street, N.W., Washington D.C. The 

Measles Initiative, launched in 2001, is 

a partnership committed to reducing 

measles deaths worldwide. The 

Initiative supports the United Nations’ 

goal to reduce global measles 

deaths by 90% by 2010 (compared 

to 2000). The Initiative is led by the 

American Red Cross, CDC, UNICEF, 

the United Nations Foundation, 

and the World Health Organization. 

In 2001, measles was the leading 

cause of vaccine-preventable deaths 

worldwide. By 2006, measles deaths 

were reduced by 68% globally and 

91% in Africa. During this time, the 

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Commander Elton Parker, Executive Assistant to the 

Deputy Director for Strategy and Policy on the Joint Staff, 

is Project Horizon’s ISPG co-lead with Rudolph Lohmeyer 

from State. He sees Global Health Engagement as an 

important strategic opportunity for the U.S. government. 

“Global health is a definitive indicator and factor in 

national and international security,” says Commander 

Parker. “Being able to mobilize nontraditional, or ‘Soft 

Power’, elements and integrate them with more traditional 

resources and approaches in a strategic manner would 

be an invaluable asset to better addressing emerging/

potential international health threats, while also advancing 

our public diplomacy as a leader in humanitarian 

assistance.” 
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Measles Initiative helped vaccinate 

more than 500 million children in over 

50 countries, preventing 2.3 million 

measles deaths.

On May 7, 2008, the U.S. Coalition 

for the Eradication of Polio (Rotary 

International, The March of Dimes 

Birth Defects Foundation, The 

Task Force for Child Survival and 

Development, The U.S. Fund for 

UNICEF, The American Academy of 

Pediatrics, and The United Nations 

Foundation) will host their annual 

Capitol Hill Reception to honor 

Congressional Champions of Polio 

Eradication. 2008 Champions include 

The Honorable Barbara Boxer, The 

Honorable Sam Brownback, The 

Honorable Bob Corker, The Honorable 

Richard Lugar, The Honorable 

Stephen Cohen, The Honorable 

Betty McCollum, The Honorable 

Steven R. Rothman, The Honorable 

Lucille Roybal-Allard, The Honorable 

Ed Royce, The Honorable James 

Walsh, and The Honorable Frank 

Wolf. The reception will be held 

from 5:30–7:30 p.m. at the United 

States Capitol Building, Lyndon 

Baines Johnson Room, Washington, 

D.C. CDC continues to work with 

its global partners in the ongoing 

efforts to eradicate polio. On March 

25, WHO’s Global Polio Eradication 

Initiative made the announcement 

that Somalia is again polio-free. 

Somalia has not reported a case of 

wild-type polio since March 2007, 

a major landmark in the intensified 

eradication effort launched last 

year to wipe out the disease in the 

remaining few strongholds. 

April 25, 2008, marks the first “World 

Malaria Day,” which was established 

and approved at the 60th World 

Health Assembly in March 2007. This 

year’s theme, “A Disease Without 

Borders,” reflects the geographic 

expansion of the observance and 

serves as a reminder that malaria 

affects not only Africa, but also other 

parts of the globe, including Asia, 

Central and South America, and 

Oceania. The April 25th remembrance 

replaces “Africa Malaria Day,” which 

has been commemorated since 

2001 to provide education and 

understanding of malaria, which 

remains a global scourge despite 

being both preventable and curable. 

Malaria continues to cause at least 

1 million deaths worldwide each 

year, with approximately 90% of 

these deaths occurring among 

young children in Africa. Although 

malaria has been eliminated from 

the United States, approximately 

1,300 U.S. travelers return with 

malaria each year. CDC works to 

address malaria globally through the 

domestic malaria program, through 

the President’s Malaria Initiative as 

an implementation partner with 

USAID, and through focused research 

activities. For more information go to 

www.mobilising4malaria.org/pages/

en/world_malaria_day_2008.html

A recent Lancet commentary 

highlights the Field Epidemiology 

Training Programs (FETPs) as 

a successful strategy to help 

build public health systems and 

workforce capacity in support of the 

International Health Regulations, 

and ultimately, to improve global 

health. Over the past 27 years, 29 

countries have created FETPs in 

partnership with the CDC, WHO, 

and other partners such as USAID to 

directly build and strengthen publichealth systems, while simultaneously 

training future public-health leaders. 

In 2008 three new programs will be 

implemented in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and 

Tanzania. The three new programs 

will combine field epidemiology 

training with public health laboratory 

training. Additionally, the Nigeria 

program will be the first ever FETP to 

add veterinary epidemiology training. 

A two-week outbreak investigation 

course through FETP is being 

planned for late April/early May for 

epidemiologists in the Iraq Ministry of 

Health to be held in Northern Iraq.

The March issue of the American 

Journal of Preventive Medicine 

includes a summary of community 

interventions to increase physical 

activity in Latin America. The 

summary, co-authored by CDC staff 

together with the Brazilian Ministry 

of Health, the St. Louis University 

School of Public Health, and a 

network of Brazilian Universities, is 

part of a broader collaborative effort 

to apply evidence-based public 

health strategies to combat the 

rapidly growing problem of chronic 

diseases in Brazil and Latin America. 

To find out more, go to http://

download.journals.elsevierhealth.

com/pdfs/journals/0749-3797/

PIIS074937970700709X.pdf.

In a recent podcast, Expanding 

CDC’s Global Impact: Collaborative 

Partnerships in Health 

Communications and Marketing, 

the lead for CDC’s international 

communications and marketing 

program elaborates on the functions 

of the global health marketing team 

and discusses some global health 

communication strategies used by 

the team. For more, go to http://

www2a.cdc.gov/podcasts/player.

asp?f=7620 

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