Celebrating Decades of U.S.-India Public Health Collaboration

September 27, 2021

Today, as India and the U.S. began discussions for their fourth bilateral Health Dialogue, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report to commemorate more than a half-century of successful collaborations with the Government of India and the 20-year anniversary of in-country presence. The CDC India country office has operated from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi since it first opened in 2001.

CDC’s decades-old, highly productive, and mutually beneficial public health collaboration with India has achieved measurable success across several critical areas, including:

  • Eradicating polio
  • Controlling HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and influenza
  • Building core public health capabilities across disease surveillance, laboratory systems, public health workforce and emergency response
  • Scaling up antimicrobial resistance, and infection prevention and control

The pandemic has further strengthened CDC’s partnership with the Government of India. CDC’s Country Director Dr. Meghna Desai notes, “The impact and strategic value of CDC’s long-standing collaborations with the Government of India are increasingly clear. Many of our joint efforts are being leveraged to support India’s ongoing COVID-19 response.”

Based on past successes and current public health initiatives, CDC and the Government of India are well-placed to better respond to the world’s most pressing public health challenges.

Read the CDC report here: https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/countries/india/anniversary-report/index.html