More than $75 million will go to states to help strengthen their response to a variety of infectious diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday.
Funding is slated to go to health departments in all 50 states plus local health departments in Los Angeles County, Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, Houston and the District of Columbia as part of the CDC's Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases Cooperative Agreement.
Part of the ELC funding has been slated to go toward identifying and responding to new and emerging infectious disease threats, such as
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Cyclospora, a single-cell parasite that causes intestinal infection that has been detected in more than 500 cases spanning 22 states since June.
According to the agency, funding will be used to hire more than 1,000 full- and part-time positions, including epidemiologists, laboratory professionals and health information system staffers, for the purpose of providing surveillance, detection and response to infectious disease outbreaks.
CDC National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Beth Bell said in a written statement the goal in providing public health officials with more resources is to create a faster response to outbreaks, reducing the number of people who become sick or die from an infectious disease.
“CDC funding provided through the ELC platform is essential to strengthening national infectious disease infrastructure,” Bell said. “With many infectious diseases first identified at the local level, this funding ensures that state health departments are able to effectively prevent, detect and respond to such health threats.”
The CDC said the latest funding is in addition to $13.7 million that ELC provided states in January. Started in 1995, ELC provides financial and technical support to state, local and territorial health departments for the sake of controlling multistate outbreaks of infectious diseases.
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