Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; German Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ) is an agency of the United States, headquartered in Druid Hills, DeKalb County, Georgia near Atlanta. They are subordinated to the Ministry of Health and Social Services of the United States (United States Department of Health and Human Services).

Their purpose is to protect the public health. An important area of the CDC infectious diseases in order matches their competence as those of the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, but is also partly going on in this area, as there is in Germany in addition to the federal even country responsibilities in health protection. In addition, the CDC handle the general prevention of (even non-communicable ) diseases, protection from pollution-related diseases, occupational safety, health promotion and health education. The CDC was founded in 1946 as the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities to support the control of malaria.

In addition to the Russian Research Center VECTOR in Koltsovo southeast of Novosibirsk, the CDC are now officially the only facility in the world that still supports poxviruses. Since the highly dangerous, frozen pathogens are released by an accident or a terrorist attack and could then spread throughout the world, has already thought several times about a destruction of these stocks last. This, however, would lose also the last opportunity to produce vaccines against smallpox in an emergency, so you have finally decided against destruction and another provision.

In the European Union there is the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which has similar, but not identical, tasks, especially the health largely up to the Member States. In contrast to the CDC the main task of the Centre is consulting and collection of disease occurrence (eg sentinel surveillance ).