Alliance to Improve Health in Developing Countries

In a unique public/private partnership, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA, USA) and the World Bank have signed a groundbreaking agreement to work more closely together to improve health in developing and transition countries through better communication, coordination, and collaboration. The CDC is recognized as a leader in global disease prevention and control. The World Bank is the leading global financial lender to low-and middle-income countries for development.

The CDC is assigning technical experts to the World Bank to collaborate on the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects on prevention and control of malaria in Africa; on environmental health in South Asia; on chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, and their risk factors including tobacco abuse, in Latin America and Eastern Europe/Central Asia; and on immunizations and vaccine-preventable diseases globally.

The broader range of global health activities will also include such items as nutrition, maternal and child health, AIDS and tuberculosis, public health, health surveillance, program planning and evaluation, health policy, and health care technology.

"Nearly 1.3 billion people representing one fourth of the world's population, continue to live in absolute poverty. Ninety-three percent of the global disease burden is concentrated in low-and middle-income countries,” noted Dr. Stephen Blount, associate director for global health at CDC.



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