The Pandemic Fund

Cambodia faces a rising risk of disease outbreaks from its vulnerability to climate change and natural disasters, intensive agricultural and livestock production, and loss of forests and biodiversity.

Through support from the Pandemic Fund, Togo has trained a total of 6,936 individuals across a wide range of sectors critical to pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. These include health professionals, community health workers, veterinary officers, agri-food specialists, youth, and civil society actors. Training topics ranged from outbreak investigation and field epidemiology to food safety, One Health coordination, and risk communication.

The Pandemic Fund is playing a catalytic role in transforming India’s laboratory infrastructure and animal health surveillance into models of pandemic surveillance and containment.

Given the country’s size, effective lab networks are critical for containing outbreaks. Following approval of the US$25 million project in October 2024, India’s government has acted swiftly to strengthen labs at the national and state levels.

The case of Burkina Faso provides a robust example of a country drawing on its Pandemic Fund grant to strengthen the capacity of its NPHI in pandemic PPR. Burkina Faso’s National Institute of Public Health operates through the Health Emergency Response Operations Center and the Central Reference Laboratory to carry out integrated PPR activities. Through the Pandemic Fund, the INSP has achieved the following since project approval in 2023:

Developed a national multi-risk and multi-hazard plan for preparedness and response to public health emergencies;

by: Priya Basu, Executive Head, the Pan

Infectious diseases know no borders. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, health systems face growing pressures – from migration and tourism to shortages of frontline workers. Rising temperatures and natural disasters are compounding these challenges, increasing the spread of waterborne and vector-borne diseases.

Over the past three decades, the global health landscape has witnessed an increasing array of actors—from international organizations and pooled financing mechanisms to philanthropic foundations. While targeted initiatives to combat specific diseases have yielded important gains, they too often operate in silos, sidelining national governments and resulting in a whole that is smaller than the sum of its parts.

Dr. Amparo Elena Gordillo-Tobar is a Senior Health Economist with over 15 years of experience as a Project Task Team Leader at the World Bank where she has prepared, managed, supervised and led innovative health financing investment Bank projects. Currently, Dr Gordillo-Tobar is the Senior Portfolio Manager for the Pandemic Fund, hosted by the World Bank, where she oversees the advances on implementation of the Pandemic Fund Projects. 

Monica brings over a decade of experience in portfolio and office management at both country and corporate levels of the World Bank. A Brazilian national, she joined the institution in 2013 and has since supported a wide range of programs, most recently supporting analytic and operational tasks across the Health, Nutrition, and Population portfolio in West and Central Africa.

She holds an MBA in Economics and Government Relations, BS in International Relations, and Certificates from the University of Cape Town in Monitoring and Evaluation.