Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his agency along with the Defense Department, plans to spend an additional $45 million in 2014 to partner with 10 countries on projects to improve field epidemiology and diagnostic testing. The news was picked up by widely by media, including NPR, (Stopping Microbes Not Missiles: U.S. Plans for Next Global Threat); The Atlantic (Why Global Health Security is Imperative); CNN (CDC: 5 ways diseases in other countries can kill you); and Los Angeles Times (U.S. targets $85 million to help 10 nations fight disease outbreaks).
Rodney Hoff, MPH, DSc, a Clinical Professor in Global Health at the University of Washington, spoke to a reporter for Modern Healthcare and said he told him that this effort looks like a promising development and that integration and coordination of efforts should help improve international capacity to deal with infectious disease threats. He said that the $85M represented new funding that would be combined with funding from existing infectious diseases programs that will be incorporated into this new program (as described the in two pilot project published in the MMWR).  He said he emphasized that there are lots of unknowns about the program and about which other partner organizations might become involved as the program develops. He also said he explained that Department of Global Health is part of a consortium of U.S. universities that could contribute to this new initiative on health security.