WHO, Germany launch a hub for Pandemic & Epidemic Intelligence for faster data sharing and connectivity worldwide

The World Health Organisation in collaboration with the German government launched a hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin to provide the world with better data, analytics and decisions to detect and respond to health emergencies.

H.E German Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus inaugurated the hub in the presence of other German Federal ministers- HE German Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn, Governing Mayor of Berlin H.E. Michael Müller, and other dignitaries such as Dr. Michael J. Ryan, Executive Director WHO Health Emergencies Programme, Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General; Katalin Karikó, BioNTech Senior Vice President, Sabine Gabrysch, Professor for Climate Change and Health, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General, Centre for Disease Control, Nigeria.

The 1st of September 2021 marked itself as one of the most quintessential date in history to commence a unique initiative by WHO and Germany at Lagenbeck-Virchow-Haus, Berlin to fight global health uncertainties and catastrophe to save lives worldwide.

The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted by SARS-CoV-2 collapsed the entire health system across the world from January 2020 onwards. The world faced a massive breakdown even after having most advanced technologies and infrastructure worldwide. The lower income and middle-income nations were greatly affected and suffered a huge wrath of COVID. And the fight is still on.

While addressing the hall, WHO Chief, Dr. Tedros said, “The world needs to be able to detect new events with pandemic and epidemic risk management. The hub will be key to that effort, leveraging innovations in data science, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other cutting-edge technologies and fostering greater sharing of data and information between communities and countries.

The WHO hub will require an initial investment of US$ 10 million from the Federal Republic of Germany to accelerate and strengthen the prospects of hub’s mission and vision to connect the world in a better way with data sharing. This would also provide an initial support in fostering diverse partnerships across many professional disciplines, sharing latest technologies, linking data, tools and communities of practice for the common good.

The new initiative is part of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme that will encourage new collaborations worldwide, drive innovations to increase availability of key data, develop state of the art analytic tools and predictive models for risk analysis and link communities of practice around the world.

Moreover, the hub will support the work of public health experts and policy makers in all countries with the tools needed to forecast, detect and asses epidemic and pandemic risks for rapid decision to present and respond to future public health emergencies.

Emphasizing the significance of data accessibility, Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s Health Emergency Programme said, “ Despite decades of investment, COVID-19 has revealed the great gaps that exists in the world’s ability to forecast, detect, asses and respond to outbreaks that threaten people worldwide.” He added, “The WHO hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence is designed to develop the data access, analytic tools and communities of practice to fill these very gaps, promote sense of collaboration and sharing and protect the world from such crises in the future.”

As of 2nd September, 2021, approximately 218,580,734 confirmed COVID-cases including 4, 534,755 deaths have been reported worldwide. Of all the countries across the world- America, India & Brazil account for the highest number of confirmed cases in order [39,300,270; 32,857,937 & 20,804,215].

The WHO hub based at Berlin will enhance collaboration across the world to use the best technology and data to detect and understand risks about future epidemics and pandemics. It holds the mission to build a system of collaborative intelligence enabling better decisions to avert and manage any global health emergencies.

Consequently, the hub will enable innovators to co-create tools and used linked data that all countries need to prepare, detect and respond to pandemic and epidemic risks, develop predictive models for risk analysis, improve public health decision-making and monitor disease control measures and infodemics through-

  • Enhancing access and linkage across multiple data sources necessary to generate signals and insights on disease emergence, risks, evolutions and impact;
  • Develop state of the art tools to process, analyse and model data for prediction, detection, assessment and response;
  • Connect and catalyse institutions and existing networks developing disease outbreaks solutions for the present and future; and
  • Provide WHO, the member states and partners with collaborative tools to underpin better and faster decisions on how to address outbreak signals and events.

The entire aspect of risk management will be developed and adapted with the help of collaborative intelligence approach that would also include technical governance, ethical and other dimensions. Collaborative Intelligence is the essence of WHO’s new approach to bring clarity to risk information and boost interaction with partners and stakeholders. This novel approach will encourage global trust between countries by promoting greater exchange intelligence to improve policies and decision-making for pandemics and epidemic preparedness.

The WHO hub will work with a wide range of data sources to better understand the context, occurrences and predictors of epidemic and pandemic risks. The data sources will be included from environmental factors such as rainfall and vegetation coverage, social factors such as health seeking behaviour, health risk literacy and cultural beliefs about disease causation and prevention; economic factors such as travel patterns and trade consumption, production and sale of wildlife.

HE Federal leader of Germany Dr. Angela Merkel, who received the title as “Chancellor Merkel” because of her long-standing international commitment for emission cuts, had raised the global health issue during the World Health Assembly summit in the year 2015, where she had raised her concern on how could we react faster towards unforeseen health circumstances globally. Taking that into cognisance, WHO, proposed the response of creating a hub that would cater to all the issues related to pandemic and epidemic risks at the global scale and would help countries react much faster towards saving lives.

In an honour to recognise her outstanding contribution to the health of the world’s people, the World Health Organisation bestowed HE German Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel with the WHO Global Leadership Award. The German Chancellor hoped that the new hub would help the world be better prepared from any such pandemics and other global health emergencies and the benefit of the findings would be shared across all countries.

Meanwhile, the dignitaries present during the event contemplated over the significance of the newly-found hub for pandemic and epidemic risks and how existing disciplines can connect each other in integrating, sharing and harmonising data to find a better way to make the world a risk free zone.

Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, the current DirectorGeneral of Nigerian Centre for Disease Control will lead the newly-found hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence at Berlin. The hub is presently operating from a centre provided by the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. In a few months, it would move to a permanent campus at the heart of city’s Kreuzberg.

The event was later concluded with a press briefing where the renowned dignitaries and officials addressed media and elaborated the mission and vision of the newly found hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.


Courtesy and Attribute: WHO

#WHO #Germany #GermanGovernment #HubForPandemicandEpidemicIntelligence #Collaboration #Berlin #DataSharing #AI #Data #ToolsandTech #Preparedness #BetterWorld #safe #Health #HealthyPlanet #Life #COVID19 #WHOHealthEmergencyProgramme #AnalyticsandDecisionMaking

More to follow:

https://www.who.int/news/item/01-09-2021-who-germany-open-hub-for-pandemic-and-epidemic-intelligence-in-berlin ; 

https://www.who.int/initiatives/who-hub-for-pandemic-and-epidemic-intelligence;

https://www.who.int/initiatives/who-hub-for-pandemic-and-epidemic intelligence/faqs; https://who.canto.global/s/VA3Q8?viewIndex=0

 

 

 

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