Global Health: HERA and WHO Launch a New €15 Million Partnership to Strengthen Pandemic Preparedness and Response

The Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have launched a new partnership funded with €15 million from the EU4Health program to strengthen preparedness and response concerning medical countermeasures for health emergencies.
Under the partnership, HERA will fund four global initiatives to support medical countermeasures in the following areas: 1) information on epidemics and pandemics, access to data and analyses, and sharing these through the WHO hub for pandemic and epidemic intelligence, 2) development of new medical countermeasures against antimicrobial resistance, including through the GARDP initiative and particularly the development of antibiotics effective against resistant pathogens and ensuring sustainable access to treatments against antimicrobial resistance, as well as promoting research for new antimicrobials, 3) strengthening national capacities for detecting COVID-19 and emerging pathogens and genomic surveillance in Africa, 4) COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) for rapid, coordinated and successful global effort to develop and facilitate access to COVID-19 technologies.
This partnership was preceded by the presentation of the EU Strategy for Global Health, the agreement between the Commission and WHO to strengthen cooperation in addressing global health threats, as well as the agreement between HERA and the WHO hub.