This page outlines the mission, focus, and priority areas of the PAHO Technical Area for Health Surveillance and Disease Prevention and Control (AD/HSD), which includes four Technical Projects and one Regional Pan American Center under its umbrella:

• Communicable Diseases (HSD/CD)
  
• Chronic Diseases (HSD/NC)
  
• IHR, Alert and Response and Epidemic Diseases (HSD/IR)
  
• Health Information and Analysis (HSD/HA)
  
• Veterinary Public Health/Panaftosa (HSD/VP)
  
  • PANAFTOSA, under HSD/VP (seat of activities in the area of zoonoses and animal health and food safety)

Each Technical Project is headed by a Project Coordinator / Senior Advisor and encompasses several teams, each headed by a Regional Advisor.

• Promote, coordinate, and implement technical-cooperation activities that are sound and appropriate for the culture and society directed to the prevention, control, and elimination of communicable and noncommunicable diseases and zoonoses.
• Strive to achieve sustainable impact through strengthened country capacity and effective inter-country collaboration.
• Collaborate to strengthen sustainable capacity in Member Countries at the individual and collective levels to measure, prevent, control, and eliminate disease.
• Assist Member Countries in the development of health-situation analysis for policy- and decision-making.

• To eradicate, eliminate, prevent and control disease.
  
• To strengthen the capacity of PAHO member states to do so by
  
  • Promoting technically feasible, economically viable, and socially acceptable programs in the areas of communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases, zoonoses, and foot-and-mouth disease.
    
  • Aiming its technical-cooperation activities at having a positive impact on public health that can be sustained by the countries of the Region.
    
• To develop sustainable capacity to effectively address public-health problems, which requires
  
  • Adequate, reliable data on health problems.
    
  • Evidence-based policies and plans. Allocating sufficient financial resources to support effective interventions.
    
  • Human resources with the proper training to implement plans.
    
  • High-quality programs in place throughout the Region.
    
  • Ongoing evaluation and quality control to ensure effectiveness and to address changing needs.
    
  • Improving country statistical data and information systems that collect, validate, analyze, and disseminate mortality and morbidity data, as well as other relevant indicators of health and development, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
    
• To provide technical cooperation to thus assist countries at each of the aforementioned levels, depending on the health problems being addressed and the existing capacity and committment of the country: while older initiatives focus more on implementation issues, new ones focus on collecting reliable data and developing sound policies.

• Within a spirit of equity and Panamericanism, to raise the awareness of national institutions to the fact that, while infectious and reemerging diseases continue to pose a significant problem in the Region, chronic and non-communicable diseases are also on the rise.
  
• To correct desegregated data to better understand and address problems of inequity in disease prevention and control programs.
  
• To continue to support technical-cooperation projects among countries as well as other forms of collaboration.

All HSD Programs have a renewed commitment to disease prevention and recognize the importance of behavior change in this regard. Social communication has therefore become a common interest. The shared agenda with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank includes the development of surveillance capacity in the countries for both communicable (including zoonotic) and chronic diseases.