Disease screening in Singapore offsets decline in US funding for global health

 

A health worker gets out of an ambulance outside a quarantine center in Mumbai.

Disease screening in Singapore offsets decline in US funding for global health

Several times a year, about ten healthcare workers from across Southeast Asia travel to Singapore to spend a week examining human waste. They collect wastewater samples directly from manholes and transport them to a sterile, well-equipped laboratory run by the Environment Agency of Singapore, where the water is concentrated and poured into test tubes for analysis and assessment of pathogens.

These training sessions, organized by Duke-NUS Medical School, a leading infectious disease research institution, teach participants how to extract genetic material that could reveal the presence of viruses.

These workshops aim to train scientists from countries in the region to detect and contain disease outbreaks before they can spread. At the end of the week-long program, participants return to their countries to share their learning with their colleagues. "This training helps countries build a workforce that can respond to future pandemics," said epidemiologist Vincent Pang, from the school's Center for Outbreak Preparedness.

One lesson learned from the COVID-19 pandemic relates to the urgent need for early detection of pathogens, advanced testing capabilities, and rapid and effective information sharing, along with a coordinated and rapid response to any outbreak.

But just two years after the COVID-19 health emergency ended, these programs appear obsolete. Several European countries have begun reducing their foreign aid, while the near-total shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development under President Donald Trump has cut funding for thousands of health projects worldwide, including those involved in disease surveillance and tracking.

"Between $20 billion and $50 billion in global health investments are going to disappear, and no one is able to fill that gap," said Manisha Bhinge, Vice President for Health at the Rockefeller Foundation, a leading supporter of global surveillance initiatives.