The government is planning to set up a new center to research mosquito-borne diseases. The center will be based in the southern city of Tainan, where the worst outbreak of dengue fever in the nation’s history killed more than 200 people last year.
The establishment of the new center is also partially in response to the quickly spreading Zika virus. It still needs legislative approval, but officials say it could be established by the end of the year at the earliest.
The deputy chief of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Chou Chih-hao, said Monday that the government is hoping to better coordinate resources and manpower. The center will include experts from Taiwan and abroad in the areas of cellular and molecular biology, environmental ecology, epidemiology, preventive medicine, and immunology.
Chou explains the objectives of the new center.
“It will be an independently run government-sponsored organization at the national level. In other words, it will have central government resources, which [we] will pool together to conduct research in southern Taiwan. Our goal is to develop a hub of mosquito-borne disease research in the Asia Pacific region and Southeast Asia," said Chou.