Summary of publication
In June 2012, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Australia signed a memorandum of cooperation (MoC) to help reduce the risk of emerging pandemic disease threats in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia.
PREVENT has been carving out activities in four countries in the Mekong Region – Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Vietnam – that could best contribute to Australian Aid's Pandemics and Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Framework, 2010-2015, which aims to help partner countries build and maintain capacities, systems and protocols in four main areas:
- promoting adherence to international standards of animal and human health
- strengthening systems for the prevention, detection and control of EIDs
- responding to outbreaks of EIDs when they occur
- building an evidence base for the response to EIDs
Although work in this first year has focused on continuing activities initially proposed by USAID, PREVENT anticipates that the following year will yield more activities that specifically address Australian foreign aid goals and objectives. To date, there has been significant headway made in nurturing relationships – and obtaining official approvals – to work in areas heretofore not targeted by USAID activities, such as all of Burma/Myanmar.