Copy of email correspondence between the
House of Lords Committee Office and the US Centers for Disease
Control
GLOBAL DISEASE
DETECTION CENTERS
I wonder whether you could be so good as to
offer us a comment on something that WHO witnesses told us last
month in regard to cooperation between WHO's GOARN and CDC's GDD
Centers. I attach the weblink to our transcript of evidence with
the WHO on 21 April, and the paragraphs on which a CDC comment
would be helpful are contained between Pages 37 and 40. We have
looked at these comments alongside Dr Dowell's own (earlier) evidence,
and much of what he says appears to explain CDC's position. But
I am not sure what CDC's reaction would be to WHO's comment on
the non-sharing of viral and bacteriological samples.
I am sorry to have to make this request, but
I feel you would want an opportunity to comment briefly on WHO's
comments before we record them in our report.
Robert Preston
Clerk to the Committee
6 June 2008
Dear Mr Preston,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on
the comments by WHO. We agree in general with the characterization
of the WHO-CDC collaboration by David Heymann and Pat Drury on
pages 35-39 of the transcript. We have discussed the challenges
quite frankly with David and Pat many times over the years and
will continue to do so, as the relationship couldn't be more important
to us. We appreciate their note that there is a close level of
cooperation, and that we at CDC are very interested in seeing
that the GDD Centers are a part of the international infrastructure
supporting IHR and functioning within GOARN. This is the essence
of the matter from our perspective.
As for the specific matter of sample sharing,
the principle is similar.
When samples are shared and the international
network functions collaboratively, as with the discovery of SARS
coronavirus under WHO leadership and with CDC support, the world
benefits. There are more than 37 WHO collaborating laboratories
at CDC that take this approach to sharing reagents, knowledge,
and samples as part of their daily work.
If there are exceptions to this collaborative
approach (and there may well be specific examples I'm not aware
of), we would like to know about them and to help address and
resolve the problems.
Scott Dowell, MD
Chief
Global Disease Detection and Emergency Response Branch
Coordinating Office for Global Health CDC
11 June 2008
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