PATH
Location
Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Malawi
Sector
Health
Type of Investment
Grant
Project Stage
Length of Investment
2020+
Investment Overview
The Global Innovation Fund has partnered with PATH, a non-profit organisation working to develop and scale solutions to solve the world’s most pressing health challenges, as they lead a series of research pilots in Malawi, Pakistan, Nepal, and Indonesia to monitor the presence of Covid-19 in low-income populations and share that valuable data to inform governmental response plans.
The Development Challenge
The Covid-19 pandemic has posed a severe threat to public health and has placed immense pressure on national health systems in both developed and developing countries. Robust disease surveillance systems are critical for the prevention and control of infectious disease. However, developing countries with under-functioning health systems and limited capacity to test and trace Covid-19 on a large-scale face significant challenges in preventing and controlling outbreaks. Controlling outbreaks is particularly important in these settings, as resource constraints exacerbate challenges with treating Covid-19 patients who require specialised treatment. While recent studies have shown the potential of Environmental Surveillance, or ES, to complement clinical testing and help detect the presence of infectious disease in populations, it has not yet been widely applied in developing country contexts.
The Innovation
PATH will lead a research project to develop and adapt Environmental Surveillance methods to low-income contexts for monitoring the circulation of the Covid-19 virus in populations and provide government decision makers with valuable information about infection trends to help inform public health interventions.
Our Investment
PATH will use GIF funding to: launch field research pilots across [3/4] countries to collect environmental samples from wastewater; create a Data Center to house and analyse field data and standardise ES methods for Covid-19 for dissemination to the research community and public health authorities; establish a Technical Assistance Committee bringing together experts in ES, epidemiology, and virology; build a Community of Practice to facilitate sharing of best practices; and conduct a cost-effectiveness study.
Investment Objective
This environmental surveillance (of sewage systems and impacted surface waters) project will include data collection from five field deployments in Africa and the Indo Pacific and a dedicated centre for curation and pooling of the data to support national and global Covid-19 monitoring and management plans.
Why we invested
This innovation seeks to address a major global crisis affecting people worldwide including millions of people living on below $5 a day. PATH will help develop ES approaches suitable for low-resource contexts and generate valuable data that can inform Covid-19 response planning to reduce the burden of disease and save lives in low-income countries. This investment will also surface important implementation lessons and help fill an existing evidence gap concerning the cost effectiveness of deploying ES, which can drive uptake by public health authorities as part of their Covid-19 monitoring and management plans. We also take a broader view that this ES innovation may have applicability if new pandemics emerge in the longer term.
PATH in numbers
GIF grant
PATH Impact Brief
PATH will use GIF’s grant to expand its use of Environmental Surveillance, or ES, which involves testing wastewater samples to detect pathogens. ES has been used successfully to monitor infectious diseases such as Polio and may be a powerful tool to control Covid-19 outbreaks as it can detect both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases in communities. ES also has the potential to complement national surveillance efforts in countries with limited capacity to test and trace.
Another key aim of this work is building a strong community of practitioners to bring together environmental surveillance researchers in low and middle income countries to promote knowledge and learning exchange, sharing of replicable models, and scaling in new geographies.
Importantly, PATH will also evaluate the cost-effectiveness of conducting ES and produce data which GIF expects to help drive future uptake of this innovation by public health authorities worldwide. While the early warning and monitoring of the epidemic is the most pressing need, ES can also potentially help track the evolution of the virus and the data can feed into programs for development of vaccines and assess the success of vaccination campaigns, which has already been successfully applied for the poliovirus immunisation.
Use of GIF Funds
GIF has approved a grant of $868,000 which, together with a $2.6m grant from the Gates Foundation, will be used to fund in-country research pilots on using Environmental Surveillance for Covid-19 detection in 5 low and lower-middle income countries. In addition, the funding will be used to establish a data centre at the Michigan State University and for conducting and publishing a cost-effectiveness study on ES.
Investment Objectives
This environmental surveillance (of sewage systems and impacted surface waters) project will include data collection from four research pilots in Africa and the Indo Pacific and a dedicated centre for curation and pooling of the data to support national and global Covid-19 monitoring and management plans.
By the end of the grant period, PATH aims to have coordinated a portfolio of projects which expand the data available for Environmental Surveillance (ES) of SARS-CoV-2 in LMICs in Africa and the Indo-Pacific. PATH aims to have developed and refined methods for SARS-CoV-2 detection and quantification in LMIC contexts.
Partner with local organisations and institutions to launch data collection research pilots in Malawi, Pakistan, Nepal, and Indonesia.
Establish a Data Center to collect and analyse ES data generated from country research pilots and share data with the wider research community and public health authorities.
Establish a Technical Assistance Committee (TAC) and Working Group to leverage existing ES communities and facilitate collaboration and knowledge exchange amongst key stakeholders and disseminate best practices to promote scaling beyond the initial study countries.
Impact to Date
GIF contracted and disbursed the initial funds at the end of December 2020 and the programme has just commenced so there is no impact data to report yet.