The recent visit by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explored opportunities for cooperation with Turkmenistan and set the stage for supporting the health of the people of Turkmenistan.

The CDC delegation was led by Dr. Alexander Millman, Program Director for the Division of Global Health Protection in Central Asia and included meetings with representatives from the Ministry of Health, the Center for Community Health and Nutrition, and the Turkmenistan State Medical University. The delegation discussed the potential for cooperation and expressed the U.S. government’s interest to support country capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to dangerous infectious disease threats, including support for a well-trained public health workforce.

Topics of discussion included collaboration in strengthening public health workforce capacity through the Field Epidemiology Training program (FETP), promoting public health and medical science, and improving capacity to detect particularly dangerous infectious diseases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first established a Central Asia office in Kazakhstan in 1995 and now has country offices in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan. CDC partners with host governments to address priority disease threats, and to strengthen public health emergency management, laboratory, surveillance, and workforce capacity to respond to disease outbreaks.