WHO & NTI Establish Global Emergency Outbreak Response Fund
Former Senator Sam Nunn and Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland announced the formation of a response fund to strengthen the global response to infectious disease outbreaks.
NTI-WHO Global Emergency Outbreak Response Fund
About the image
NTI helped the World Health Organization establish and build a fund to allow teams of epidemiologists to deploy immediately to investigate and respond to disease outbreaks around the globe.
Challenge
The World Health Organization needed support to launch a new effort in disease response.
Action
2002, NTI worked with the World Health Organization to create the NTI-WHO Global Emergency Outbreak Response Fund
Results
The fund allows the WHO to dispatch teams of epidemiologists to the site of disease outbreaks around the globe within 24 hours
In 2002, NTI worked with the World Health Organization to create the NTI-WHO Global Emergency Outbreak Response Fund, which allows the WHO to dispatch teams of epidemiologists to the site of disease outbreaks around the globe within 24 hours.
The fund has been continually replenished since its creation with donations from governments and private philanthropies, and it has supported rapid response to the SARS disease outbreak in Vietnam and China and to the Ebola outbreak in the Republic of Congo. In December 2004, the funds financed the response to public health threats resulting from the Tsunami Disaster in Southeast Asia.“The WHO Global Outbreak Response Fund supported by NTI has helped our group react immediately to the Tsunami disaster–moving staff to the regional office as forward deployment to the most affected areas–Sri Lanka and Aceh. As a result of the fund, 100-plus experts are on standby to respond to any outbreak, and to support WHO and affected countries with technical advice rapidly,” says Dr. Pat Drury, Project Manager, Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response at the WHO. I’ve said it before but it is worth saying again: The fact we have the Response Fund is a godsend.”