SVEN HOPPE
It is intended to strengthen cooperation between countries and scientific institutes around the world and to help identify signs of possible pandemic outbreaks early on.
“One lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic is that the world needs to make a significant leap in data analysis so that politicians can make public health decisions on that basis,” Tedros said. The start-up funding of 30 million euros comes from the federal government.
“An essential basis for the fight against future pandemics is data,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a video message. “Data that, when bundled and processed with the right analysis tools, produce insights that we alone, each for ourselves, could never, or at least never, discover so quickly. The WHO Hub in Berlin will use these technical possibilities and share the findings with all countries. “
The center should not become a new agency, as WHO emergency aid coordinator Mike Ryan emphasized. Rather, with the support of Germany, the WHO wants to provide a platform and tools that enable scientists from all over the world to evaluate data. The aim is to design models with which risks can be better assessed. In addition to governments, partners should also be research institutes and other organizations. Artificial intelligence will play a big role, said Ryan.
The whole thing stands and falls with the willingness of the WHO countries to cooperate and be transparent, said Spahn. He appealed to governments to learn lessons from the coronavirus pandemic. All countries would have to work on pandemic preparedness. “The world is not adequately prepared,” said the minister. “In the highly networked world, pandemic risks must be discovered as early as possible.”