The Pandemic Fund

Background

Honduras received US$17.1 million from the Pandemic Fund to strengthen the country’s ability to detect, mitigate, and respond to public health threats. The grant catalyzed an additional US$3.7 million in co-financing and US$15.3 million in co-investment.

Honduras seeks to overcome a range of challenges facing its public health system. Access to healthcare in Honduras is limited, with far fewer healthcare workers per capita than recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Seventeen percent of the population does not receive any healthcare. Adding to this complexity, nearly 550,000 people entered Honduras in 2024 as part of the migrant crisis affecting the region, amplifying the country's vulnerability to cross-border disease spread. 

The project is a collaboration among the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Food and Health Security (SENASA), the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (SERNA), the National Autonomous University of Honduras, and the University of Agriculture, as well as UNICEF and the WHO as implementing entities.
 

Project objectives

With the Pandemic Fund grant, Honduras intends to bolster the country’s health security and minimize the fallout of future pandemics on its people’s health and socioeconomic wellbeing. 
 

Implementation arrangements and key components

Honduras’s project encompasses the Pandemic Fund’s priorities—surveillance, laboratory systems, and workforce development—with a focus on high priority regions and hospitals. Detail on the activities comprising each area include:

1. Enhancing surveillance and early warning capabilities. Activities within this area include adapting information systems across the human, animal, and environmental health sectors to monitor diseases with pandemic potential, implementing standard procedures for surveillance and detection, integrating the One Health approach into coordination committees at the regional and municipal levels, expanding community-based surveillance in ten key departments, running simulations and drills for health events with pandemic potential, and performing a voluntary, external evaluation of the country’s adherence to International Health Regulations. Activities also include instituting a national, multisectoral risk communication strategy, strengthening response capabilities for priority zoonotic diseases, and assessing the processes of the veterinary services to improve service delivery.
2. Upgrading the laboratory network. This component of the project involves equipping laboratories designated for human and animal health and environmental testing, providing transportation for the collection and delivery of samples, implementing biosafety standards and custody protocols for high-risk samples, developing a genomic surveillance network, and deploying laboratory quality management systems across the network.
3. Building skill across the human, animal, and environmental health workforces. Activities in this area include training rapid response teams on outbreak investigation and response, establishing a plan to expand the human, animal, and environmental health workforces in emergencies, and developing advanced human resource training.
4. Strengthening health services at ten priority hospitals. This component of the project includes assessing the infection control program, deploying the national infection prevention and control plan, initiating programs for the rational use of antimicrobials, and executing the National Strategy for Surveillance of Healthcare-Associated Infections. It also includes implementing a hospital management model tailored to pandemic events, revising and activating contingency plans for epidemic event response, and improving supply chain management.
5. Establishing a border health strategy. Activities focused on the country’s borders include assessing risk and capacity at prioritized points of entry, developing rapid response contingency plans, and upgrading basic infrastructure and equipment at ten strategic points of entry.

The WHO provides technical guidance, as well as expertise in coordinating large-scale health initiatives and implementing protocols. UNICEF provides technical guidance. 
 

Expected outcomes

Through the collaboration with the Pandemic Fund and other partners, Honduras aims to: 

1. Enhance surveillance and early warning capabilities to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemic events
2. Upgrade the country’s laboratory network to diagnose pathogens with pandemic potential across the human, animal, and environmental health sectors
3. Build skill within the human, animal, and environmental health workforces
4. Strengthen health services at ten priority hospitals to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemic events, and
5. Establish a border health strategy.