The second International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) Global Partners Forum (GPF) took place on 21 and 22 November 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand, and was co-hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) South-East Asian and Western Pacific Regional Offices and the Centre for Pathogen Genomics at the Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne. The event provided a platform for public health practitioners, academics, policy makers and financial institutions to build partnerships, introduce innovations and socialize new ideas. In addition, the first round of grantees of the IPSN Catalytic Grant Fund were announced during the first day of the event. Funding was awarded to ten grantees from organizations in low- and middle-income across all six WHO regions to drive impact in pathogen genomic surveillance.
Background on the IPSN Catalytic Grant Fund
The IPSN Catalytic Grant Fund, hosted by the United Nations Foundation, was launched to support IPSN members in low- and middle-income settings with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wellcome Trust. The funding will support partners in scaling up pathogen genomic surveillance projects, disseminate knowledge with the broader community and empower countries to make fast decisions in diseases surveillance. A new round of funding is scheduled for 2025.
Background on IPSN
The WHO Hub launched the IPSN in May 2023 as a global network to accelerate progress on the deployment of pathogen genomics and improve public health decision-making. By strengthening the pathogen genomic surveillance ecosystem, the IPSN enables faster detection of new pathogens and enhanced tracking of the spread and evolution of diseases to drive better public health responses. The IPSN supports ongoing disease surveillance and will help detect and fully characterize new disease threats before they become epidemics or pandemics.
The IPSN envisions a world where every country has equitable access to sustained capacity for genomic sequencing and analytics as part of its public health surveillance system. By creating a mutually supportive global network of stakeholders in pathogen genomic surveillance, insights and best-practices can be more widely shared, effectively addressing the challenges of building an effective disease surveillance system.
Contact IPSN Secretariat: ipsn-secretariat@who.int
Background on the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence
The World Health Organization (WHO) Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence is working towards a world where collaborative surveillance empowers countries and communities to minimize the impact of pandemic and epidemic threats. Collaborative surveillance, a key concept within WHO’s framework to strengthen the global architecture for health emergency prevention, preparedness, response and resilience (HEPR), facilitates the systematic strengthening of capacity and collaboration among diverse stakeholders globally, both within and beyond the health sector, to enhance public health intelligence and improve evidence for decision-making.