Statement from Dr. Rick Bright, Senior Vice -President, Pandemic Prevention and Response, The Rockefeller Foundation
NEW YORK | May 21, 2021 – The Rockefeller Foundation welcomes today’s announcement from the United Kingdom of a new Global Pandemic Radar and looks forward to close collaborations to prevent future pandemics.
The Global Pandemic Radar’s pathogen surveillance network will save lives and protect health systems by identifying disease outbreaks early and enabling the rapid development of tests, treatments, and vaccines.
The Rockefeller Foundation is developing a complementary pandemic prevention institute capable of producing data insights ―from both traditional and non-traditional data sources ― that can contribute to containing a disease outbreak in the first 100 days. This work builds upon the Foundation’s legacy of catalytic health investments and more recent work to leverage the power of data and technology to improve health outcomes globally.
With the international collaboration of The Rockefeller Foundation, the Federal Republic of Germany’s WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, and now the UK’s Global Pandemic Radar, with the support of the Wellcome Trust and World Health Organization, by the end of this year we will transform the global capacity for stopping disease outbreaks in the first 100 days before they can begin to spread.