The World Health Organization (WHO) today 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.