IGH is currently assisting the government of Uzbekistan in developing an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), located inside the Services for Sanitary and Epidemiological Well-being (SSEW) in Tashkent. The EOC will improve public health emergency and surveillance systems to improve the country’s capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to natural occurring outbreaks, intentional or accidental releases, and biological threats of international concern. Previously, Uzbekistan did not have a center for public health officials to tackle public health emergencies for intra-country and regional events. IGH has trained EOC staff who will coordinate activities from the national level and work within regions to build capacity for local level responses. The long term impact in Uzbekistan will be the development of the capacity to become a hub for the Central Asian region to collaborate with neighboring countries in cross-exchange of strategy through electronic surveillance databases, provide mechanisms for international peer-to-peer mentorship, and create rosters of available international response teams to deploy between countries during outbreaks to provide expertise and support.
