In January 2021, ADDRI was first designated by the World Health Organization as a Collaborating Centre for the Elimination of Asbestos Related Diseases. In January 2025, ADDRI was redesignated in this role, reflecting the institute’s broader focus on all dust-related diseases.

This again confirms the institute as a global leader in asbestos and dust-related diseases and asbestos mitigation – and the only stand-alone WHO CC dedicated specifically to the elimination of asbestos and dust-related diseases.

The main role of the WHO collaborating centres is to provide strategic support to the WHO to meet two main needs: implementing WHO’s mandated work and programme objectives; and developing and strengthening institutional capacity in countries and regions.

Designation as a Collaborating Centre brings with it an enhanced visibility for ADDRI and recognition by national authorities, calling public attention to the health issues around asbestos and dust-related diseases. It opens up improved opportunities for ADDRI to exchange information and develop technical cooperation with other institutions, in particular at international level, and to mobilise additional and sometimes important resources from funding partners.

During the initial designation for 2021-2025, ADDRI actioned the broad range of deliverables WHO and ADDRI agreed upon. This included publishing an internationally recognised e-Toolkit on Asbestos-related diseases (ARDs), important research to fill knowledge gaps on the elimination of asbestos and much needed training on ARDs in developing countries. To ensure maximum accessibility, all our international training videos are now captioned with the 6 United Nations languages (Spanish, Arabic, Russian, French, Chinese and English) as well as Indonesian.

The redesignation creates a new set of agreed actions and deliverables that ADDRI will work towards delivering including improving diagnosis of asbestos and dust-related diseases in low- and middle-income countries through training programs and clinical guidelines development and delivery of data sets on asbestos use and disease burden in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions.

These new and updated resources will be included in the revamped International e-Toolkit for the Elimination of Asbestos and Dust-Related Diseases to be published on this website later in 2025.

This is a giant leap forward to increase global understanding of disease identification, patient care and environmental management of asbestos and deadly dusts.

You may also be interested in…

Sign up to our newsletter

Sign up
Skip to content