PENA: I woke up.
I saw blood
all over the blankets.
And my hands and my feet
were bitten by something.
I didn't know what it was.
Then we realized
that there had been bats.
DOWELL: We can help countries
to pick up new threats,
to confirm them
in the laboratory,
to investigate clusters
of disease, and ultimately
to treat patients and contain
new disease threat
before it spreads
around the world.
DANEL: Diseases cross borders,
and what happens
in these small countries,
what happens in one country
may affect the other countries.
LINDBLADE: And of these new
emerging infections,
Zoonotic diseases
play a huge role.
And Zoonotic diseases are those
that are transmitted
from animals to humans.
JULIAO: Bats are found
all over the world,
and they've been associated
with different diseases
all over the world,
so what information we find here
will give us an idea
of what sort of infections
they can harbor
and what is the likelihood
of those infections
being transmitted to humans.
MORAN: Right now, right here,
we are trying to get
some samples
from the bats, because there's
an outbreak right now --
there's a current outbreak
of rabies in cattle
in this area.
We find bats in the net.
We check what kind of species,
because there are
some protected species.
We take and put
in some small bags,
and then we took
all the captured animals
and go to a facility here
in the village.
We anesthetize the animals
and take blood samples
and samples from ectoparasites.
LINDBLADE: The reason for having
the program here
is to understand more
about the kinds
of infections and diseases
that are occurring
in Central America,
which helps us to understand
and prepare better
in the United States,
to counter --
to prevent and to treat -- these
important infectious diseases.
VARMA: SARS was really
the wake-up call for GDD.
BREIMAN: Where it occurred
locally, it was a local problem,
recognized as a local problem,
but over a period of time,
became an international problem.
McFARLAND: U.S. CDC started
an emerging infectious disease
program here in China,
largely in response
to the 2003 SARS epidemic.
VARMA: Through the work we do
with the Chinese government
to build modern
surveillance systems,
we're able to detect
an outbreak that they never
would have picked up before,
because it was occurring
in a large area, over a long
period of time.
ZHU: we are making
a big impact in that country,
because we are training
their workforce
and training
their disease detectives.
VARMA: We were
specifically focused
on one pathogen
called salmonella,
and within just a few months
of data that we were analyzing
side by side with our partners
in China,
we were able to see
that there were
a number of cases with a very
specific molecular fingerprint
that were occurring only
in infants.
DOWELL: There's no doubt
in my mind
that we are better prepared
in 2010 for a pandemic
than we were in 2003.
We knew even when
people questioned,
"Is central Africa sort of
a dark window
with pandemic H1N1, how would we
even know if it was there?"
Well, we had respiratory
surveillance in place in Kenya.
BREIMAN: We have a very unique
project going on in Kibera.
We have a group of what we call
community interviewers --
they're basically
field workers --
[ Ouma speaking
Kenyan language ]
BREIMAN: And they carry
personal digital assistants,
you know, PDAs.
These PDAs are programmed
with the questions
we're trying to get answers for.
OUMA: Like, we can talk
of cholera.
H1N1 was found in the community.
ODENGO: She wanted to know
how we are going on,
anyone who has been sick,
anyone who has been in hospital.
OUMA: So, in this last
one week...
BREIMAN: And this is an area
of about 30,000 people,
about 8,000 households.
And they go to every single
household every two weeks.
And if someone's very sick,
they encourage them
to go to the field clinic.
ODENGO: Like one day,
I fell sick of pneumonia.
I couldn't walk.
I couldn't do anything.
So my neighbors carried me
up to CDC.
BREIMAN: When they go
to that clinic,
if they have a condition
that we're surveying for,
that we're concerned about --
let's say
it's pneumonia, as an example --
then we collect information
about that illness
in the clinic by one
of the well-trained clinicians
that we have working there.
Because of market practices,
because of air traffic,
it's very possible for a disease
to move from one corner
of the Earth
to another within a day.
DOWELL: There's no better way
to protect
the American population
against new disease threats
than by strengthening
our partners
in public health institutions
around the world.
LINDBLADE: It's not a profession
that you get into for the money.
You really get into it
because you
feel like you can
make a difference.
MORAN: I really love this job.
I really love go to the field
and catch the animals
and find the samples.
VARMA: When we are seen as
people that are not political,
that are conveying information
because it is
in the best interest
of the public health
in the United States
or somewhere else,
I think that's when we're
really at our best.
DOWELL: We've learned
that we need to be
prepared for the unexpected,
and the better we understand
the background of pathogens
emerging from animal reservoirs,
the better prepared
we're going to be
to respond to the next surprise.
