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The epidemiologist’s traditional role to study infectious disease outbreaks, control their spread, and devise appropriate prevention will contribute to the reconstruction effort through a variety of activities involving the improved capacity of institutions to respond to infectious and preventable disease. Vital program elements should include:

· Rehabilitation of disease surveillance and active use of information for public health decisions;

· Increased availability of trained epidemiologists in the region and the training of other levels of health workers by these epidemiologists;

· Rehabilitation of infectious disease and environmental health laboratory capacity;

· Institutionalization of capacity of ministries of Health to design and implement community-based prevention and control of disease programs; and

· Support for natural hazard vulnerability assessments, disaster risk management planning, information collection and management systems, and development of disaster early warning systems.