By Bridget Hunter

Staff Writer

Washington - The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will spend millions of dollars during the next three to five years to combat emerging pandemic threats (EPT) worldwide. Details of the program were announced by the agency November 3.

USAID said the program, which builds on USAID's historical successes in disease surveillance, training and outbreak response, aims to pre-empt or combat, at their sources, newly emerging diseases of animal origin that could threaten human health. Examples of such diseases include HIV/AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), H5N1 avian influenza and the 2009 H1N1 swine influenza virus.

In addition, researchers believe the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed more than 50 million people worldwide, was probably caused by a virus that jumped to humans from birds. In a modern-day global pandemic, scientists project that a quarter of the world's population could be infected and between 51 million and 81 million people could die.

The increasingly interconnected globe allows diseases to spread quickly, so the extreme threat they pose to public health, commerce and economic development must be countered with "a comprehensive, proactive approach that draws on a wide array of technical resources to build sound detection and response capacity," according to USAID, which manages the program with technical support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The EPT program aims to focus resources on early detection of dangerous pathogens, creation of sufficient laboratory capacity to support surveillance, appropriate and timely responses, enhancement of national and local response capacities, and education of at-risk populations on how to minimize exposure to emerging diseases. USAID is implementing the program through five projects:

PREDICT will expand monitoring of high-risk wildlife such as rodents and nonhuman primates in geographic hot spots for the emergence of new infectious diseases. USAID has awarded a five-year cooperative agreement valued at $75 million to a coalition of experts in wildlife surveillance from the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Wildlife Trust, the Smithsonian Institution and Global Viral Forecasting Inc.

RESPOND will focus on developing outbreak investigation and response training that merges animal and human health dynamics to help identify and respond to outbreaks of newly emergent diseases quickly and sustainably. The five-year cooperative agreement, worth $185 million, will be implemented by Development Alternatives Inc., the University of Minnesota, Tufts University, Training and Resources Group, and Ecology and Environment Inc.

IDENTIFY will support the development of laboratory networks and strengthened diagnostic capacities in likely points of origin for emergent diseases. USAID is working with the U.N. World Health Organization, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health through existing grants to support this project.

PREVENT aims to design and communicate how humans should behave in response to zoonotic diseases and to describe practices that increase the likelihood a disease will spread from wildlife to people. USAID has awarded a five-year, multimillion-dollar cooperative agreement to the Academy for Educational Development to work in four high-risk geographic areas - the Gangetic Plain, the Amazon River Basin, the Congo River Basin and Southeast Asia.

PREPARE, being implemented under a three-year cooperative agreement with the International Medical Corps, will provide technical support for simulations and field tests of national, regional and local pandemic preparedness plans to ensure countries can respond to pandemics. The agreement's funding ceiling is $6.65 million.

Of the 1,461 pathogens known to cause disease in humans, at least 60 percent are of animal origin. Many researchers believe the most effective way to prevent new pandemics lies in predicting where new diseases might emerge and detecting viruses and other pathogens before they spread to people, which is precisely the strategy USAID is supporting through the EPT program.

"Identifying emerging pandemics quickly is critical in protecting human populations from severe disease outbreaks," said Representative Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, which oversees funding for USAID global health efforts. "I am pleased USAID is supporting this collaborative project, and I am confident it will help improve our ability to monitor and identify wildlife diseases like influenza strains that could affect humans."

Additional information on the EPT program ( http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2009/pr091103_1.html ) is available on the USAID Web site.

For more information about emerging infectious diseases, see "Internet Latest Tool in Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance ( http://www.america.gov/st/health-english/2008/March/20080320143918abretnuh0.3996088.html )" and "Emerging Infectious Diseases Focus of International Meeting ( http://www.america.gov/st/health-english/2008/March/20080314142654lcnirellep0.7607691.html )."

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)

ENDS