When future generations judge our responses to the important epidemics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they are likely to ask: how well did they learn to predict and prevent the emergence of new disease threats?

The Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI) is 501c3 not-for-profit whose team has spent the last 10+ years developing a global system to prevent pandemics. Current global disease control focuses almost exclusively on responding to epidemics after they have already spread globally. Nevertheless, dramatic failures in such pandemic control, such as the ongoing lack of success in HIV vaccine development twenty-five years into the pandemic, have shown that this wait-and-respond approach is not sufficient. The development of systems to prevent novel pandemics before they are established should be considered a human health imperative. Had we had such systems in place thirty years ago, we may have averted the HIV pandemic.

We have shown that most major diseases of humanity originated in animals and that exposure to wild and domestic animals leads to continuous spillovers of novel agents into humans. Through ongoing monitoring of humans, animals, and global data we have created a pilot for the first global early warning system to prevent novel pandemics. By coupling this innovative surveillance in field sites throughout the world with a consortium of top laboratories, we are able to characterize the diversity of viruses and other agents as they move from animals into human populations, providing basic insights into how new diseases enter humans and improving our ability to decrease the frequency of such events.

GVFI is a member of the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak and Response Network (GOARN), and a candidate World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Pandemic Prevention. GVFI is generously supported by grants from Google.org and the Skoll Foundation. Currently we have ongoing partnerships in over 20 countries worldwide, and our organization is at the forefront of infectious disease detection in some of the most logistically challenging regions of the world. GVFI maintains offices in San Francisco, California, Washington, DC, Yaounde, Cameroon, and Guangzhou, China.

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