One Luxembourg respondent went so far as to suggest that this separation of functions actually hinders the advancement of genomics for infectious disease control in that country. In this second group of countries, infectious diseases are evidently given much greater prominence both in national public health policy and in genomic research and development. Indeed, in the case of South Africa, it appeals from the responses received that medical genomics is oriented almost exclusively to the elucidation and control of infectious disease, with little interest in the kinds of chronic disease studies favoured by proponents of stratified medicine in the other countries that were looked at.