Communicable diseases are a major cause of suffering, disability and death in the world. The World Health Organization’s Programme on Communicable Diseases provides technical guidance and support to national governments to organize and implement programmes aimed at setting up or strengthening ongoing control of common diseases, reducing transmission, mortality, morbidity and human suffering, and gradually eliminating these diseases so that they cease to be a public health problem. In some cases, the aim may also be to eradicate selected communicable diseases