Background & Overview
The Pandemic Fund is a first-of-its-kind multilateral financing mechanism dedicated exclusively to strengthening critical pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPR) capacities and capabilities of low- and middle-income countries through investments and technical support at the national, regional, and global levels. The Fund provides a dedicated stream of additional, long-term financing for investments in areas such as infectious diseases surveillance, laboratories and diagnostics, and health workforce strengthening.
The devastating human, economic, and social costs of COVID-19 have highlighted the urgent need for coordinated action to build stronger health systems and mobilize additional resources for pandemic PPR. While many institutions and financing mechanisms support pandemic PPR activities, none of them is solely focused on it. This means that spending on other immediate needs can take priority over critical pandemic PPR investments, some of whose return may only materialize in the future.
Recognizing the need to address chronic under-investments in pandemic PPR capacity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, in April 2022, the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors requested that the World Bank begin exploring the process to develop and set up a new fund. With broad support from the G20, the World Health Organization (WHO), founding donors, civil society, and other stakeholders, the World Bank’s Board of Directors approved the proposal to establish the Pandemic Fund on June 30, 2022.
The Pandemic Fund was officially established by its Governing Board at its inaugural meeting on September 8-9, 2022. It was launched at a high-level event hosted by the G20 Presidency of Indonesia, on the margins of the G20 Joint Finance and Health Ministers’ Meeting on November 13, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia.
The World Bank serves as the Pandemic Fund’s Trustee and hosts the Secretariat, which includes technical staff seconded from the WHO. The Governing Board appointed a Technical Advisory Panel, chaired by the WHO, with leading world experts to assess and make recommendations to the Governing Board on the technical merits of funding proposals, ensuring linkages to the International Health Regulations, as part of the broader global PPR architecture.
The Pandemic Fund has moved forward quickly to fill critical investment gaps. As of November 2024, the Pandemic Fund had awarded two rounds of grant funding, totaling US$885 million, which catalyzed an additional US$6 billion in funding from international and domestic partners for 47 projects that strengthen capacity within and across borders in the areas of disease surveillance, laboratories and diagnostics, and health workforce, covering 75 low- and middle-income countries in six geographical regions.
These projects are promoting the operationalization of multisectoral, One Health approaches for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPR), galvanizing coordination and collaboration among; and bringing substantial additional, dedicated international resources for pandemic PPR while incentivizing countries to increase domestic investments in this area to ensure sustainability of financing and impact.
