WHO's Pandemic Hub Director advocates for swift intervention against imminent epidemics.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is opening a new pandemic data center today in Berlin, Germany. The center, named the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, will serve as an early-warning system focused on aggregating and rapidly analyzing diverse data to predict, prevent, detect, and respond to pandemics and epidemics.
The Hub, headed by Chikwe Ihekweazu, aims to support countries, regions, and global health actors to manage public health threats more efficiently. It integrates advanced technologies like machine learning to analyze data across animal health, human symptoms, migration patterns, and other signals that might indicate emerging outbreaks.
Berlin was chosen for being an open, growing, and developing city that radiates a certain neutrality. The Hub will be located in partnership with the Berlin Charité.
The data center will gather data from various sources, including public health systems, private actors in the health system like hospital chains, and data not directly connected to public health but important for pandemics, such as animal health data. The data will be collected, linked, and analyzed in real-time to make risk assessments.
The data center will also evaluate flight data and information about weather and climate, as these can influence outbreaks of infectious diseases. Based on the data analysis, specific measures will be recommended to individual countries.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, the director of the new WHO pandemic data center, stated that the aim of the data center is to prevent pandemics from happening at all. He also emphasized that it is the task of the data center to give better advice to politicians.
Colleagues in Africa, Southeast Asia, and America must feel a connection to the hub, according to Ihekweazu. He aims to ensure that the people who work in the hub represent the world in the best possible way.
Germany has pledged financing of 100 million euros for the new WHO pandemic data center. The center will be officially opened today by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
While the data center aims to provide valuable insights and recommendations, it was not mentioned that politicians will always follow these recommendations. The establishment of smaller regional hubs with certain regional expertise is conceivable in the future. Until recently, Ihekweazu was the director of the Nigerian disease control agency.
- The WHO Hub for Pandemics and Epidemic Intelligence, situated in Berlin, Germany, will investigate a wide range of data sources, including medical-conditions information, to predict and prevent health-and-wellness threats.
- As part of its comprehensive data analysis, the new WHO pandemic data center will scrutinize indicators like animal health data, flight information, and weather patterns, hoping to offer advice on avoiding medical-conditions associated with pandemics.
