Washington, DC, March 14, 2002 (PAHO) - The Pan American Health Organization's nine scientific and technical centers address subjects of extreme importance for the public health of the Region of the Americas. With expertise in a wide variety of areas, these centers do everything from help track disease to distribute scientific information, improve the environment, and build up expertise in nutrition, child health, and other key areas of technical cooperation among the countries.

The Caribbean Epidemiology Center (CAREC), in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, was created to improve the health of the people of the Caribbean. It provides technical cooperation, services, training, research and experts to develop improvements in epidemiology, laboratory technology and related health disciplines.

Another PAHO center located in the Caribbean is the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI) in Kingston, Jamaica. Its goal is to attain food security and achieve optimal nutritional health for all peoples of the Caribbean, taking into account changing patterns of nutritional disease and increasing demands by member countries for information and advice on the management and control of diet-related chronic diseases

CEPIS, the Pan American Center for Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Sciences in Lima, Peru, cooperates with the countries of the Americas in evaluation and control of environmental risk factors that affect health. The Center disseminates information and provides direct technical cooperation in development of appropriate, sustainable water and sanitation technologies for rural and marginal urban areas.

The Latin American Center for Perinatology and Human Development (CLAP) located in Montevideo, Uruguay, works to improve maternal and child health, cooperating with the countries in the identification and solution of the main obstetric, neonatal and pediatric problems in the region. Its strategies include teaching, research, dissemination and technical co-operation with the countries of the region.

The Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), created in 1949, is a Central American institution that specializes in food and nutrition. It studies nutritional deficiencies and finds ways of overcoming them, providing scientific and technical leadership to promote nutrition and food security.

The Pan American Institute for Food Protection and Zoonoses ( INPPAZ), located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, works to improve food safety in the region, through surveillance of foodborne diseases and technical collaboration in food inspection services, using modern methods. It produces numerous publications and coordinates training to enhance food safety and reduce the high incidence of disease linked to food.

Foot-and-mouth disease represents a serious economic threat to the countries of the region, and PAHO's Pan American Foot-and-Mouth Disease Center, PANAFTOSA, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is working to eradicate this disease from the Americas. Created in 1951, the Center works with countries affected by that disease as well as rabies and brucellosis, which have impacts on human health.

PAHO also has a Regional Program on Bioethics, based in Santiago, Chile, to meet the demands of its member countries for open discussion of areas such as justice and equity in the allocation of health resources, patients'rights, dying with dignity, the ethics of the beginning and end of life, the ethics of public health, research, the use of drugs, and other areas. Though not a scientific center, the regional program, created in 1994 through an agreement with the Government of Chile, has developed a significant regional presence and has become an area of growing importance. The program's mission is to work with public and private groups to develop and apply concepts and procedures that will ensure the ethical sustainability of decisions regarding scientific research, technical training, professional education, and health care.

PAHO serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization. Officially established in 1902, it is the world's oldest international health organization and works with all the countries of the Americas to improve health and raise the standard of living.