On November 4, President Obama signed an Executive Order reinforcing the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) as a presidential-level priority and bolstering the United States as a major catalyst for supporting the GHSA and its promise. In his Executive Order, President Obama highlights the role of protecting global security as a key tenet of the United States’ national strategy to combat biological threats. He points out that in a globalized world, in order to protect ourselves, we must protect and bolster other nations’ health infrastructures.

The United States, joining the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), and other relevant organizations and stakeholders, will coordinate amongst governmental and non-governmental entities in order to advance the “global health agenda.” This will include the development of an inter-agency council to draft guidance for the agencies and support and track global health issues and how the United States can lead and participate in addressing them, among other things.

CSTE is pleased to support the President’s efforts, acknowledging that walls cannot stop the spread of disease, and therefore national health security can only be achieved through the protection of global health security. CSTE’s international role has accelerated rapidly within the last two years as we work to better support epidemiology surge capacity needs. Funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the CDC Foundation enabled CSTE to support international public health emergencies in Ebola, and now in Zika.

In January 2015, four French speaking senior epidemiologists traveled to four high risk Ebola Virus unaffected countries in Western Africa. As part of a comprehensive strategy to contain the regional Ebola epidemic, CDC and other international partners during this period were working in 18 unaffected high risk countries, with the aim of increasing capacity to detect and control any introduced Ebola Virus cases. The goal was to enhance the epidemiologic capacity in these countries and to provide:

• Capacity building, technical assistance and guidance to the Ministries of Health/Health Departments surrounding Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia; and
• Assessment of existing capacities and recommendations for improvement of policies and procedures

Funding for this work continued, and since August 2015 CSTE has supported an additional 40 deployments including those from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, with an average deployment in Western Africa of 43 days.