Rapid response to emerging health threats

Deadly public health threats know no borders. They travel quickly, increasing the urgency and complexity of an effective response. We combine scientific rigor with implementation expertise and a commitment to work where the need is highest, to provide a rapid response when deadly outbreaks occur.

Ebola

FHI 360 helped rapidly assess the safety and efficacy of a candidate Ebola vaccine among health and frontline workers. The obstacles were great: The epidemic was ongoing, yet there was no existing clinical trial and no office facilities, infrastructure or in-country staff. The few clinics that existed were inadequately equipped and had no freezers for storing vaccines. Potential site staff had no clinical experience. Working with local partners committed to addressing this public health threat on an extremely compressed schedule, and using our local networks to respond flexibly to emerging needs, an FHI 360 team was deployed to Sierra Leone on 10 days’ notice. In the next four weeks, 400 local health professionals were trained in good clinical practice, allowing them to initiate the trial, which achieved its first enrollment target of 6,000 patients just two months after the first patient had enrolled.

Chikungunya

When new candidate vaccines become available, speed is of the essence to test their effectiveness and decrease the human suffering associated with infections. Chikungunya, which is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitos, can cause years of severe, debilitating joint pain. More than 1.7 million suspected cases have been reported to the Pan American Health Organization. Despite its prevalence, there is neither a cure nor a vaccine for prevention of this disease. When a Chikungunya outbreak hit the Caribbean in 2015, FHI 360 reacted in three weeks to deploy a trial of a candidate vaccine in six sites.