Global Courant 2023-05-21 01:20:03
The World Health Organization launched an international surveillance network on May 20 to rapidly detect threats posed by emerging infectious diseases such as covid-19 and share information to prevent pandemics.
The International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) will provide a platform to connect countries and regions, improving sample collection and analysis systems, the WHO said.
The network should facilitate the rapid identification and traceability of communicable diseases, as well as the exchange of information and the necessary measures to prevent health catastrophes such as the coronavirus pandemic.
It will be based on genomics, which consists of sequencing the genome of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens and studying their functioning to determine their contagion, danger and spread.
The new network, which will be launched on the eve of the World Health Assembly, which brings together the WHO member countries every year in Geneva, will have a secretariat within the WHO – “Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence ”– and will collect information on pandemics and epidemics.
The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the importance of studying the genome of viruses to combat the diseases for which they are responsible.
While the covid-19 pandemic has encouraged countries to improve their genome sequencing capacity, others still lack the capacity to collect and analyze samples, the WHO said.
The new global network is called upon to face these kinds of challenges, since it should “give all countries access to genome sequencing of pathogens and analysis within the framework of their public health system,” according to the director general. from WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
