Our Approach – OLD
The earlier we can detect a disease, the faster we can act to save lives and livelihoods.
DETECT: Finding outbreaks faster by directly engaging communities through open source tools.
VERIFY: Crowdsourcing health professionals to verify the earliest signs of a potential outbreak across the globe.
CONNECT: Building trust-based networks among multi-sectoral practitioners across geographic borders.
MEASURE: Tracking the timeliness of outbreak detection, verification, and response through standard metrics.
Our solutions are locally co-created through a partnership of Ending Pandemics, the government, local developers and private sector partners. These tools are accessible to all, and sustainable with local resources after a catalytic investment.
Three out of every four emerging infectious diseases arise in animals and spread to humans. Animal outbreaks can quickly lead to human outbreaks when people are in close contact with livestock or wildlife. If we prioritize our efforts to find outbreaks faster in animals, it is possible to prevent human infection altogether. Factors like climate change, urbanization, and increased travel and trade can exacerbate spread and must be taken into account.
Impact: How We Measure Progress
Our progress in improving disease surveillance in animals and humans should lead to:
- An increase in the number of outbreaks reported
- A decrease in the time to detect any outbreak
- A decrease in the time to verify any outbreak
To measure these important indicators, Ending Pandemics works with partner organizations to track the timeliness of outbreak detection, verification, and other associated measures. We have conducted pilot studies in over two dozen countries to refine our methods and understand the value of these metrics. We subsequently convened an international group of experts to review our work and help refine the framework we have developed can be found below.
We continue to support countries in their efforts to track these metrics and better understand the types of tools, policies, and investments that are helping to find outbreaks faster around the world.