Epidemic risk modeller metabiota has started modelling work for an initiative with the African Risk Capacity (ARC) that aims to raise awareness of African countries’ epidemic risk, coordinate contingency planning, and give governments financial resources to respond to first signs of a national epidemic.
The programme creates an insurance trigger mechanism with participating countries and actively develops these tools with top insurers, enabling enhanced epidemic solutions through better understanding of the risk.
Metabiota’s platform estimates epidemic preparedness and risk, including the frequency, severity, duration and cost of outbreaks with a combination of risk analytics, historical data, disease scenarios and insights from public health analysts and global epidemiologists.
Mohamed Beavogui, ARC Director General, said: “Metabiota understands risk and how it can be measured, so we believe this program marks the next frontier for how Africa, and the world, can better manage outbreaks.”
Metabiota’s research shows that outbreaks illustrate distinct patterns and therefore can be insured so that resources, financing, and other risk profiling and contingency planning support can be set up in advance to offset the impact.
Dr. Karen Saylors, vice president of Field Research for Metabiota, said: “This ARC pilot empowers African nations to develop a novel, proactive approach that will change the way outbreaks are managed, and that is one of the many reasons we are excited about this program.”
“Because of our deep field surveillance expertise and our relationships on-the-ground in West and East Africa, Metabiota has an intimate understanding of the challenges and opportunities to help African nations better prepare themselves for a health crisis. We fully align with ARC’s vision to empower sovereign nations and this innovative effort supports that vision.”
ARC is a specialized agency of the African Union (AU), which has already seen successes with climate risk financing in Africa including over $34 million paid out to African governments to assist over 2.1 million people against drought impacts.
The ARC Outbreak & Epidemic program will evaluate public health risks through a multidimensional self-assessment of the country’s ability to respond to an epidemic event and create tailor-made risk contingency plans.
Leveraging Metabiota’s risk modelling capabilities and ARC’s successes in building national capacity for disaster risk financing in Africa, the initiative will analyze pathogen-specific outbreak scenarios and deliver advanced risk profiles of pilot countries to provide insight into the cost associated with the loss and response of epidemiological events.
The World Bank estimates the cost of managing the Ebola crisis could have topped $32 billion, with an estimated $2.2 billion lost in the gross domestic product (GDP) in the three hardest hit African countries in 2015 alone.
ARC is led by 33-member states, eight of which have joined ARC’s risk pools by purchasing insurance coverage for drought response costs.
