The UCSF Pandemic Initiative for Equity and Action (UPIEA) is embarking on a new project to work with national ministries of health in Latin American and Middle East and North African countries, with backing from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop new viral disease surveillance programs to detect emerging viruses using local hospital data, media reports and other non-conventional data sources.

The project builds on IGHS’s experience in practical public health work, looking for signals that an outbreak of COVID or some future novel virus may be brewing. IGHS built such strategic information expertise beginning in the 1980s to help contain the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The CDC also began investing in pandemic response in low- and middle-income countries around the world in response to HIV/AIDS. Recent national COVID response legislation has provided additional funding for those efforts. Read more...