The European Union and WHO further enhance their partnership for stronger pandemic preparedness and response

Today the European Union’s Health Emergency Preparedness Authority (HERA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) initiated a new partnership with a € 15 million allocation under the EU4Health programme to boost capacities at national, regional, and global levels for better preparedness for and response to health emergencies. 

In the framework of this partnership, HERA will fund four global initiatives to support:

• Epidemic and pandemic intelligence, access to and sharing of data and analytics through the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness to assist decision-making with regards to health emergencies preparedness and response (€ 4 million);
• The development of new medical countermeasures for tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR), notably the development of antibiotics efficient against resistant pathogens that pose the greatest threat to health. This action would ensure sustainable access to AMR treatments and promote their responsible use and affordability, while also driving research and prioritization of the search for new antimicrobials (€ 8 million);
• The scaling up of national capacities for SARS-CoV-2 & Emerging Pathogens detection & genomic surveillance in Africa (€ 2 million); and
• The COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) to ensure the fastest, most coordinated, and successful global effort to develop and facilitate access to technologies to fight COVID-19 (€ 1 million).

Through these initiatives, HERA and WHO will strengthen global capacities to prepare, detect, prevent, and respond to cross-border health threats by providing information, capacities, and tools against health emergencies.

The new partnership with HERA will further deepen the longstanding, strategic partnership between WHO and the EU to help countries in their efforts towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal 3 on good health and well-being and all other health-related targets and SDGs. 

Background

HERA was established as a new Directorate-General at the European Commission (EC) on 16 September 2021, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a key pillar of the European Health Union and its mission is to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to health emergencies. 

The EU is a leading global health actor through international fora such as the G20 and G7 and providing critical financial support to health and related issues, including human development, climate change, crisis management and humanitarian assistance.