In March 2016, a four member team from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SIAS) visited the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies (IESS), University of Ghana as part of their research on Pandemic Emergency Facility project – a project on new financial mechanism to address pandemic outbreak risk in developing countries.

The team was made up of Jeong Su Sinn, Andrew R. Griffith, Colbye Prim and Rachel Estrada. The team interacted with Prof. Chris Gordon (Director, IESS) and Research Fellows of the Institute on Ghana’s climate change capacity building, climate change and poverty and possible ways to enhance emergency response.

The John Hopkins team have now presented their findings title “Pandemics in a Changing Climate: Evolving Risk and the Global Response”. Below is a summary of the final report along with links to the Final Report and Panel Discussion.

Summary of the Report: 

This year’s project on “Pandemics in a Changing Climate” is an ambitious attempt to change the paradigm policy makers have used to understand the link between climate change and pandemic outbreaks. This discussion is extremely timely given the increasing threat of climate change and its projected impacts on the spread of infectious diseases. Recent large­ scale outbreaks such as Ebola in West Africa and the Zika virus in the Americas have demonstrated the importance of quick, coordinated response and rapid deployment of financial resources. As a result, the G7 leaders have called for the establishment of the Pandemic Emergency Facility (PEF), which will rely on pandemic insurance, bonds, and long­term pledges to contain future pandemic outbreaks. The PEF was officially launched ahead of the 2016 G7 Summit, with Japan (this year’s G7 President) contributing the first $50 million in funds. Pandemics in a Changing Climate examines the evolving nature of pandemic risk in the context of systemic changes in global weather patterns and how the nascent pandemic insurance market might evolve over time to best allocate risk resulting from the associated emerging threats.

Link to Panel Discussion: https://www.sais-jhu.edu/content/pandemics-changing-climate-evolving-risk-and-global-response

Link to Final-Report: http://www.swissre.com/library/pandemics_in_a_changing_climate_evolving_risk_and_the_global_response.html