Why Do We Need It?

Ensuring that a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19 never happens again

We need to take action now, to improve our responses and strategies to ensure that we are better prepared for the next time.

Together, we can better identify, respond to and recover from future health emergencies.

The Trinity Challenge is one part of the world’s commitment to tackling zoonotic disease, to prevent a recurrence on the scale of COVID-19. We are action-oriented, and all efforts are directed towards generating new insights and solutions to safeguard the health of populations worldwide.

We are committed to supporting the Sustainable Development Goals agenda, which includes the WHO’s target of protecting 1 billion more people from health crises, and strengthening imperilled health systems.

The Potential Rewards Of Better, More Collaborative Thinking Are Huge.

What if, in future, the investments and infrastructure were in place to identify an emerging or re-emerging infectious disease threat before it became an outbreak or epidemic? What if humanity learnt to analyse rapidly which targeted, coordinated interventions would be most effective in response to an infectious disease, and how to intervene at the lowest social and economic cost? What if researchers came to understand how to initiate a social and economic recovery in a way that did not exacerbate inequalities?

For example, imagine we had a sewage surveillance system that monitors potentially harmful pathogens before a large-scale outbreak happens. Or if we had real-time imaging reports that could track deviations from usual traffic patterns around health care facilities?

Currently, there are insufficient systems in place to give the right people the right access to the right data at the right time: We are ineffective in combining insights gained across data sources and sectors to support the identification of, response to, and recovery from health emergencies.

Among the first efforts of The Trinity Challenge to address this deficiency was a call to action for better usage of data: Please find the article for download here.