The Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) was present this week at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2023 in Dakar, Senegal to moderate a discussion on the key role that wastewater pathogen surveillance plays in global pandemic preparedness. The Grand Challenges Annual Meeting, organised by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and this year co-hosted by Institut Pasteur de Dakar, brings together scientists, researchers, funders, and policymakers from around the world to speed innovation for impact and create solutions to address inequities in global health and development. Support for the enhancement, extension, and consolidation of wastewater-based surveillance for public health is a priority for HERA in the move towards the development a global early warning system. The occasion saw productive exchanges with stakeholders from across the global health security architecture and forged stronger links between with key partners on the African continent, a region at the core of HERA’s international dimension.
Wastewater environmental surveillance has been a valuable tool for monitoring pathogens like poliovirus and SARS-CoV-2 and informing public health interventions. In the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the public health community and decision-makers are considering with a growing interest the utility of wastewater surveillance for pandemic preparedness. HERA has the key task to strengthen environmental monitoring including wastewater-based surveillance and supports defining common priorities, developing aligned procedures for detection and data sharing, and employing genomic epidemiology to ensure relevant information on pathogens with pandemic and/or epidemic potential is widely and regularly available in Europe and beyond.
The HERA delegation also met with the Institut Pasteur de Dakar to discuss support for vaccine manufacturing in Africa, as well as with representatives of the World Health Organisation’s Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO) to discuss the upcoming WHO Dakar Hub and explore opportunities for further collaboration. HERA is supporting the scale-up of laboratory capacities for both clinical and environmental surveillance in the EU and in the African continent and works to contribute to develop a collaborative health intelligence architecture that will enable partners and Member States to better prepare and respond to cross border health threats and emergencies.
Background
The Commission's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA)'s mission is to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to health emergencies. A core goal of HERA is to ensure the development, manufacturing, procurement, and equitable distribution of key medical countermeasures (MCM) to address any possible gap in availability and accessibility.
To improve data collection on pathogens that require MCM response, HERA finances projects to strengthen surveillance infrastructures for example by supporting national wastewater-based surveillance activities, as well as by strengthening sequencing capacities in Member States, characterisation of viruses through DURABLE, and technological development of the EIOS Platform carried out by the Joint Research Centre (JRC). Among the various actors active in the field of event-based surveillance at Union and global levels, of particular importance for HERA’s work is a close cooperation with European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.
HERA is a key pillar of the European Health Union and a fundamental asset to strengthen the EU's health emergency response and preparedness.
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Details
- Publication date
- 11 October 2023
- Author
- Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority