Strengthening Monitoring, Preparedness and Response to Priority Arboviruses with Epidemic Potential: Collaboration WHO Global Arbovirus Initiative and Wellcome Trust

The emergence and re-emergence of arboviruses with epidemic potential, such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika, among others pose an urgent global public health challenge. Factors like increased human movement, urbanization, climate change, and uncontrolled mosquito population growth contribute to their spread. Arboviruses are among key infectious pathogens considered most sensitive to environmental and climate change. The World Health Organization aims to better understand how and why these diseases escape control and address these threats through the Global Arbovirus Initiative in the most affected communities through a coordinated approach involving multiple sectors and building global partnerships. The vision for this proposal is to enable protection and resilience for the 4 billion+ people around the world at risk of or affected by arboviruses with epidemic potential. The proposal aims to strengthen arbovirus risk monitoring, preparedness, and integrated response, taking a global approach but focusing on Africa, South-East Asia and the Western-Pacific through activities across four related and aligned workstreams, namely epidemiology and burden of transmission, ethics, community engagement, and clinical management. The added value of this proposal is the identification of areas for collective investments allowing for systems thinking, as opposed to siloed thinking, to address complex challenges related to Arboviruses.