2023-05-22 16:25:13
The World Health Organization (WHO) set up its International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) on Saturday. This is a system focused on emerging infectious diseases. It was designed to quickly identify their appearance and limit the risk of a pandemic, in particular by sharing information.
Identification, traceability and treatment potential
In concrete terms, it is a platform common to all countries and regions of the globe which optimizes the collection and analysis of samples, thereby ensuring better identification and traceability of pathologies. The information thus gathered will be used to determine the health measures to be applied but also to develop possible treatments, or even vaccines.
For this, the experts have recourse to genomics, that is to say to the sequencing of the genome, of the various pathogenic agents. In particular, they will be able to learn more about the contagiousness, the dangerousness and the mode of diffusion of new viruses. “The world is stronger when united to fight common health threats,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of WHO.
The manager highlighted the example of Covid-19, and described the new network as an “ambitious” system. This is based, among other things, on a secretariat located within the “Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence”, a center set up by the WHO to collect data on pandemics and epidemics.
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