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Royal Center for Disease Control

Brief History

The Royal Center for Disease Control (RCDC), formally known as Public Health Laboratory (PHL) was established in 1989 as an independent laboratory to carry out water, food and drug quality testing in Bhutan. The laboratory operated under the Public Health Division which is now the Department of Public Health. While basic water quality testing and monitoring capability was established and initiated, food and drug quality capacity testing was not established due to lack of infrastructure and human resource. In due course, RCDC was tasked to establish diagnostic capacity for infectious diseases of public health importance like tuberculosis, HIV, Hepatitis B and syphilis. Subsequently, infectious diseases diagnostic capacity was expanded based on the need in the country. PHL was also a major stakeholder in the control of iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) which was eliminated as public health problem in 2003. During the last two decades, the roles and responsibilities of PHL has increased enormously from a basic testing of water and few infectious diseases to a development and initiation of activities towards improved and systematic methods of disease control and prevention. PHL has been recognized by WHO as a national reference laboratory for emerging infectious diseases and other endemic infectious disease like measles, rubella, tuberculosis, HIV, dengue, influenza. As a national reference laboratory for the infectious diseases, PHL has also extended its regional recognition by joining the regional laboratory network with the WHO collaborating centers and other institutes in the region. As per the need and the directives from the Ministry of Health, PHL has also taken up the responsibility for carrying out disease surveillance and outbreak investigation including applied research activities. PHL now act as technical backstopping to the national public health programmes and the Ministry of Health for formulating evidence based health policy, planning and intervention methods through finding of scientific evidences  and recommendations of appropriate interventions. Further, the change of disease epidemiology and other public health concerns like monitoring of environment, drinking water quality, food safety, drug quality and abuse of psychotropic substances need technical institution that can provide technical support to relevant agencies/stakeholders and work on research and innovation. Therefore, the increase scope of work demands an up-gradation of PHL from divisional to Departmental status to improve its working efficiency and effectiveness, and facilitate relevant agencies/ stakeholders in delivery of their services to the public.

Mandates

1.	Conduct diseases surveillance and research of public health importance (Annual Health Conference in 2009 directives).

2.	Conduct disease outbreak investigation and response (Annual Health Conference in 2009 directives).

3.	Monitor food and water (environment) borne health hazards (Water Act 2012).

4.	Verification of the quality of medicinal products (Medicine Act 2003).

5.	Testing of narcotic and psychotropic substances (NDPSSA Act 2005). 6.	Maintain and disseminate information on poison and risk (DoPH directive 2013).

7.	Conduct collaborative educational and research activities with national and international institutes.

8.	Develop capacity of health professionals in disease epidemiology and laboratory sciences (Annual Health Conference in 2009 directive).