SINGAPORE -- To ensure readiness in fighting novel influenza strains, the Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s Institute of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology (IIDE) and the GISAID Initiative (a Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data) have joined forces to strengthen collaborations between scientific communities across the world. This is with the aim of facilitating timely development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.
Against a backdrop of new variants of infectious disease threatening public health, this first in Southeast Asia collaboration is indeed timely. GISAID’s unique sharing mechanism, which promotes the rapid sharing of influenza data of public health and animal health concern enables earlier and more rapid response to potential threats from novel influenza strains.
Prof. Leo Yee Sin, Director of Institute of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, TTSH said, “Influenza in tropical Singapore is year round with two seasonal peaks that pose significant disease burden every year. It is important that we monitor virus evolution to enhance vaccine development and to detect drug-resistant strains that affect treatment for our patients.”
“We are pleased to anchor this collaboration to empower database analysis of virus genome sequence data worldwide,” said Prof. Leo, a renowned expert on infectious diseases.
The two day symposium and workshop will bring together some 86 healthcare professionals from 17 nations as well as policy makers to encourage cross- multidisciplinary collaboration.
Dr. Hanns-Christoph Eiden, President of Germany’s Federal Office for Agriculture and Food said, “The GISAID Platform has become an indispensable resource for researchers as well as public and animal health officials, as it underpins many collaborative research projects to better understand the evolution of influenza viruses, their transmissibility and pathogenicity, and how novel animal viruses evolve and spread to become pandemic. The German Government is committed to the public-private partnership with GISAID, jointly improving the capacity and skills of the platform for risk management and crisis prevention.”
Hosted by the Singapore’s Ministry of Health and the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by its Ministry of Food and Agriculture (the official host of the GISAID Platform) the event will run from 23 to 24 October 2014. The Bioinformatics Institute (BII), an institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is also a co-organiser of this event.
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