Geneva- February 2024- The World Health Organization (WHO) announced US$ 4 million in funding from donors to create a catalytic grant fund for organizations working in pathogen genomic surveillance. The fund will support projects across the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to pilot projects and in doing so, create an evidence base for how to quickly scale-up pathogen genomic surveillance. The results of this kind of surveillance help countries and the world to respond more quickly and effectively to prevent outbreaks and to respond to them.

The initial grants for the catalytic fund have been provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and Wellcome, to support the International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN). IPSN is a new global network of pathogen surveillance actors convened by WHO through a Secretariat at the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin. The fund is hosted by the UN Foundation on behalf of the IPSN.

Pathogen genomics analyses the genetic code of viruses, bacteria, and other disease-causing organisms to understand, in conjunction with other data, how infectious they are, how deadly they are, and how they spread. With this information, scientists and public health officials can identify and track pathogens to prevent and respond to outbreaks as part of a broader disease surveillance system, and to develop treatments and vaccines.

“Genomic surveillance is a critical tool for countries to respond to public health threats. However, access to genomics has been highly uneven, and there is a risk that the incredible capabilities built up during the COVID-19 pandemic will be lost as the world’s focus shifts,” said Sara Hersey, WHO Director for Collaborative Intelligence.

“Pathogen genomics and surveillance can tell us which pathogens exist in a population and how they are transmitting and evolving. These are key tools for researchers, policy-makers and healthcare workers to rapidly identify and respond to outbreaks or the emergence of drug-resistant strains,” said Wellcome’s Director of Infectious Disease, Alex Pym.

“We are proud to stand alongside other donors and partners from the International Pathogen Surveillance Network to seed this important fund,” said Manisha Bhinge, The Rockefeller Foundation’s Vice President for Health.

The amount of US$ 4 million will be available for IPSN members to apply for grant funding in February 2024. The fund’s purpose is to empower lower-resource members of the IPSN to create knowledge that can benefit the global genomics surveillance community.

This can be done through research to develop pathogen genomics surveillance tools as global goods, or by piloting innovative approaches that generate insights to share across the network. The fund is intended to support equity of engagement across IPSN members and provide catalytic funding for LMICs to scale-up competencies in pathogen genomic surveillance.