MBDS

Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance

Newsletter

May to August 2009

Executive Summary of MBDS EB Meeting (13 August 2009)

E xecutive Board members and Country 2009), detailed progress reports from countries by
Coordinators or their representatives from all six strategy using the new MBDS monitoring indicators,
MBDS countries participated in the meeting, along results of a special study of early MBDS country
with the MBDS Coordinating Office and observers responses to novel influenza A/H1N1, conducted by
from a number of development and technical partner CCs in June-July 2009 and other presentations from
organizations. The Executive Board meeting the Regional Forum (from Guangxi Province, Global
commenced with remarks from Prof. Sann Chan Health and Security Initiative [NTI], Google and
Soeung, Executive Board Chair from Cambodia, who INSTEDD)
described progress in each strategy area over the
past year and noted his overall satisfaction with Country coordinators are
progress made. He then handed over the Executive requested to develop a new
Board chairmanship to China’s Dr. Wang Liying. Dr. Master Plan for 2011-2016
Wang reviewed the proposed agenda, made and Operational Plan for
modifications to it, and then solicited and obtained the first 2-year operational
endorsement by Executive Board members. period 2011-2012, to be
presented to the next EB
China Country Coordinator Ms. Lu Guoping
meeting in August 2010.
presented a comprehensive report regarding follow-
up from the special CC meeting in Vientiane (June

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MBDS Coordination
Office is requested to
identify technical
assistance to help
the CCs to accomplish
the task.
e.g., within a single document or in
separate documents
• Operational Plan budgets should
include regional and country
activities
o Country budgets should be
based on standardized unit
costs, e.g., for management,
central level activities and
each cross-border site
o Budgets should be for
funding needed to implement
the plan during specified
operational period and
should be presented to
funding partners in terms of
gaps (what is already
covered by government or
MBDS Newsletter www.mbdsoffice.com
other external partners and
what remains unfunded)
• A new Master Plan should be
developed for 2011-2016, and
Operational Plans should be
developed for the first 2-year
operational period 2011-2012 with
technical assistance from RAND
Corporation.
• Progress as reported by China CC
may be incomplete because several
countries may not have reported
fully yet on all indicators
• The MBDS newsletter should be
actively distributed to the MBDS
community as well as being posted
on the MBDS website
Lao PDR offered to host the next Regional
Forum and Executive Board meeting in Lung
Prabang, in August 2010. The next Country
Coordinator meeting will be in Beijing in late
February or early March 2010. The main task
of the CC meeting is to develop the Master
Plan for 2011-2016 and Operational Plan for
the first 2-year operational period 2011-2012,
to be submitted to the EB meeting to be held
in Laos in August 2010.
Dr. Moe Ko Oo, MBDS Coordinator,
presented a comprehensive report on
activities of the MBDS Coordinating Office
over the past year and the status of
information sharing from each of the cross-
border sites from January-July 2009.
Each country representative shared their
experiences concern with disease
surveillance in their countries. Dr. Li
Qiongfen of Yunnan CDC presented a report
on response to emergency public health
events in Yunnan Province, describing the
system for surveillance and response to a
broad range of emergency events. Dr.
Kumnuan Ungchusak, Executive Board
member from Thailand then presented
lessons learned from Thailand’s experience
to date in responding to the new influenza
A/H1N1 pandemic. He described lessons
learned in the areas of surveillance,
communications with other countries,
relations with the media, and crisis
management and encouraged other MBDS
countries to also learn from what he
described as Thailand’s shortcomings in
these areas.
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The general discussion focused mainly on MBDS
strategic and operational planning, and how to
proceed for the coming years. Participants offered
their views with regard to what a Master/Strategic
Plan and Operational/Implementation Plans should
include and the time frames for future plans. Some
key points of agreement included:
• The purposes of Master and Operational
Plans should be specified for purposes of
clarity and consistency
• Master Plan should be comprehensive and
should drive Operational Plans for
activities at the country and regional levels
• MBDS planning should be consistent with
and integrated into overall country plans
and should be linked to relevant
international initiatives, e.g., ASEAN, WHO
• Master Plan should be used to solicit
support from development partners (and
thus should potentially include notional
budget, at least for specified operational
planning period)
• Members should determine how to best
link a single longer-term Master Plan with
multiple shorter-term Operational Plans,
 PROGRESS BY MBDS
VIETNAM

Recently MBDS An Giang conducted 3 traning

SMS FOR DISEASE
SURVEILLANCE PILOT PROJECT
IN MUKDAHAN
6th - 7th Aug, ChangeFusion and Opendream
together with InSTEDD’s engineers went to
Mukdahan for follow up the usage of Geochat project
with Khun Punchawee and Mukdahan’s SRRT. The
result of field visit is the Mukdahan’s SRRT prefer to
use Geochat as a communication and reporting tool,
but with a much greater emphasis on follow up.
In the meeting Mukdahan team also mentioned about
how to set up the cross border communication and
send report via Geochat between Mukdahan and
Suvarnakhet because it will be help surveillance
system under MBDS.
courses from 31 July and 1st and 2nd August 2009.
The first training course is on community based
surveillance for village health workers, total
participants is 30; they have learnt about case
definition of priority diseases and how to report to
higher level. The second and third training course is
for health workers at district and commune health
centers regarding epidemiology, surveillance and
epidemic investigation, how to analyze and present
data (total participants is 20 and 30, respectively).
An Giang health quarantine center also had a meeting
to strengthen the capacity at the Tinh Bien
International border gate to review strengs and
weakness of the quarantine activities and how to
solve it.
Following are some pictures of those activities.

For organizing the effective SMS communication

system. they’re going to train each chief of staff in
district’s hospitals as the provincial teams and lead
their team in district’s public health center so they
can train and support themselves in district level.
Current is time to demonstrate Geochat’s value as a
communication tool.

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 April 15-18,2009 held in Dongxing City,
monitoring cholera in Vietnam border areas
of technical training courses, training a total
of 88 participants. Including those from
MBDS Yunnan
Quang Ninh province and the Mong Cai
MBDS Yunnan Organization Mechanism Built on CDC professionals.
April following by project launch meeting in Guilin in
March. Leading by Yunnan Health Bureau, Mr. Fu
Xin’an, the project will implement by Yunnan CDC,
and coordination office was set up in CDC. Dr. Lu
Lin, the Director General of YNCDC, is the team
leader.

Yunnan Coordination Office allocated project budget

to cross border sites, total amount is 47,000USD for
them to carry out XB activities in 2009.
Cross Border meeting was held between Mengla
County and Louang Namtha, Laos on 1st April in
Mengla County. 30 participants from both side
attended the meeting. The two sides reviewed the
project in 2005-2007, and discussed the future
cooperation on core diseases surveillance,
information sharing and exchange, emergency
response and XB training.

August 5-7, 2009, MBDS Guangxi Coordinator Dr. Li Huiyang unofficial visit to Vietnam,
Quang Ninh province and Mong Cai city, the establishment of cross-border co-point
communication channel.
(Guangxi MBDS Coordinator, Dr. Li Huiyang talks with director of the Quang Ninh Province CDC)

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