ASEAN launches Airborne Infection Defence Platform
The Airborne Infection Defence Platform (AIDP) was officially launched on August 8 to strengthen ASEAN countries’ tuberculosis (TB) response, and health care system and pandemic preparedness to address the growing issue of airborne respiratory infections. The initiative was inaugurated at a side event of the 16th ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting (AHMM) in Vientiane, Laos, where Government leaders from ASEAN member states gathered to improve understanding of TB and pandemic preparedness across ASEAN, enhance stakeholder cooperation, and strengthen nations’ capacity to address airborne respiratory infections.
After conducting a landscape assessment, the AIDP will focus on strengthening pandemic and TB responses in each ASEAN country, including at the community and primary care levels. This will be done by enhancing existing healthcare infrastructure to improve detection, treatment, and prevention. It will also include leveraging platform technologies that have developed since the COVID-19 pandemic, including portable digital X-rays that enable testing to be done locally without the need for people to travel to hospitals or clinics, rapid molecular diagnostic platform technologies, and real-time digital surveillance tools. These various TB preparedness measures will be beneficial in facing a future pandemic, which is highly likely to be an airborne infectious disease.
