CARE and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Renew Commitment to Cooperate on Health Care in Poor Communities

CARE
Monday, 6 May 2002

CARE today announced it is renewing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The goal of this Memorandum is to strengthen the capacity of CDC and CARE to assess, analyze and implement disease prevention and control programs with a primary focus on communities. Areas of collaboration for CARE and CDC include environmental health, public health management, public health emergencies, HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, and reproductive health.

"We are very pleased to renew the Memorandum of Understanding, and commit our organization to sustaining the relationship with the Centers for Disease Control," says Peter Bell, president of CARE USA.

The original Memorandum, from 1997, has been revised to reflect the strong partnership between the two organizations and references successes from the first phase of collaboration, through the CARE-CDC Health Initiative (CCHI). For example CARE and the CDC joined forces to spread valuable knowledge to the international community. CARE staff combined field work in some of the poorest and most remote areas in the world with the CDC's scientific expertise to produce articles recently published in the American Journal of Public Health in its first ever global health issue. The papers included research on innovative ways to prevent cholera and diarrhea, novel public information campaigns using folk media to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and public health messages for safe motherhood.

The director of the CDC's Office of Global Health and the director of CARE's Health Unit will supervise all activities initiated and managed under the MOU. Within CARE, Luke Nkinsi, CCHI project director, and Reema Jossy, CCHI project officer, will implement key CCHI activities.

For more information, or to contact CARE, see their website at: www.care.org