U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris today opened the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Southeast Asia Regional Office in Ha Noi. 

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo: VGP

The new Regional Office strengthens CDC’s ability to meet its mission of protecting Americans and people of the region by responding more rapidly to health threats wherever they occur and building key relationships to tackle shared health priorities.

Addressing the event, Vice President Harris reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to regional health security cooperation and renewed previous calls to action on pandemic preparedness and response.

“Through this office, we will work closely with our regional partners to share strategies and strengthen each other’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats, today and in the future. This achievement is the result of years of high-level cooperation between our governments. It also represents an important opportunity to come together to discuss our nations’ shared health security priorities,” said U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra. 

John MacArthur is the new CDC Southeast Asia Regional Director. Prior to this appointment, Dr. MacArthur served as the CDC Thailand country director for more than six years. He has spent nearly half of his 23-year CDC career focused on improving health security in Southeast Asia including managing over US$100 million of infectious disease funds focusing on the control of malaria, tuberculosis, dengue, Zika, influenza, and COVID-19.  

Dr. MacArthur also served as CDC’s Team Lead for the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, a US$620 million per year program to control malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

In addition to the Southeast Asia Regional Office, CDC also recently established Regional Offices in Eastern Europe/Central Asia (Georgia), the Middle East/North Africa (Oman), and South America (Brazil)./.