Beyond traditional health security risks, increased international travel and trade, population growth and movement, greater urbanization, ecological changes, political instability, and insufficient attention to existing weak health systems are key drivers for the emergence of infectious disease threats. These risks, combined with the continued possibility of deliberate or accidental release of pathogens, justify why the global community must adopt a whole-of-society, multisectoral approach to combat these threats.

IDI partners with governments, research institutions, universities, international organizations, the private sector, and local organizations to strengthen health systems for global health security. Our multisectoral and scalable approaches promote collaborative partnerships and country-led solutions for sustainability and self-reliance. We strengthen health systems holistically across all components through:

Differentiated Services with a Special Focus on Priority Populations

• Integration of Global Health Security Programme into existing public health initiatives with prioritization of scope on healthcare workers, refugee communities and other vulnerable populations.
• Develop community-level interventions for early warning systems focusing on vaccination, water, sanitation and hygiene [WASH], disease surveillance, planetary health, infection prevention and control.
• Provide above-site support for disease outbreak response through policy, advocacy, health education and capacity building for safe and secure communities and stable livelihoods.
• Strengthen antimicrobial resistance, use and consumption surveillance and response especially in specialized healthcare units and other one-health sectors [animal and environment health]
• Strengthen laboratory network capacity to safely and securely handle high-infectious and bioterrorism-prone pathogens and ensure biosafety and biosecurity for personnel, laboratory and communities.
• Build capacity for Africa-led public health emergency preparedness and response through technical support to Ministries of Health and/or National Public Health Institutes [NPHIs].

Development, Roll Out and Validation of Health Products

(Medicines and vaccines)

• Support the accreditation of selected healthcare facilities to roll out a comprehensive case management programme for clinical care of highly consequence pathogens.
• Deployment of clinical decision tools for rationale antibiotic prescription and stewardship practices to combat antimicrobial resistance.
• Enhance vaccine access and confidence in the African population through rapid deployment of new vaccines, safety surveillance [pharmacovigilance] and implementation research.
• Develop and roll out approved pre-positioned research protocols for vaccines and other medical countermeasures during disease outbreaks to inform accelerated public health policy action.

Point-of-Care Diagnostics

• Support the development and validation of point of care [POC] diagnostics and devices for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases [EIDs].
• Consolidate and expand acute febrile illness [AFI] surveillance in Africa for pathogen discovery, design of point of care [POC] tests and early detection of disease outbreaks.
• Strengthen national molecular surveillance of outbreak-prone pathogens to provide epidemiological trends, transmission pathways and evolutionary trends of emerging variants/strains.

Harnessing Big Data

• Create a findable, accessible, interoperable and reproducible [FAIR] global health security data warehouse to support data science-related analysis and research.
• Strengthen epidemic intelligence and modelling capacities and capabilities for predicting emerging infectious diseases [EIDs] progression, disease outbreaks and cost-effective interventions.
• Apply machine learning algorithms to develop data-driven AMR stewardship interventions or therapeutics and inform future antibiotic development pipelines in Africa.
• Develop capacity for integration of non-health data [climate and environment metrics] into disease surveillance systems to inform enhanced situational awareness, outbreak forecasts and research.

Our Global Health Security Overarching Objectives

• Establish the Global Health Security scientific seminar series and the knowledge management hub to facilitate documentation of program experience, scientific publications, replicable models and best practices.
• Set up a technical assistance programme to roll out validated health systems strengthening models to other African countries to ensure cross-border preparedness and response.
• Set up the Sewankambo scholarship programme for health security in Africa to support masters, PhD and post-doctoral fellows for enhanced technical leadership and expertise.
• Develop an accredited GHS curriculum for in-service healthcare workers to ensure continuous professional development and technical competencies for handling public health emergencies.