Google grants $14M to forestall pandemic

As part of its Predict and Prevent initiative, Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, last week announced grants of more than US$14 million to support partners working in Africa and Southeast Asia to prevent the next pandemic.

The fund will help boost efforts to identify hot spots where diseases such as HIV/AIDS may emerge, detect new pathogens circulating in animal and human populations, and respond to outbreaks before they become global crises.

"The teams we are funding today are on the frontiers of digital and genetic early detection technology. We hope that their work with partners across environmental, animal and human health boundaries will help solve centuries-old problems and save millions of lives," said Dr. Larry Brilliant, Google.org executive director.

Of the said amount, a $2.5 million multiyear grant will be awarded to the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health to support research to accelerate the discovery of new pathogens, and to enable rapid, regional response to outbreaks by establishing molecular diagnostics in hot-spot countries, including Sierra Leone and Bangladesh.

According to Google.org, researchers have discovered more than 75 viruses to date and have established critical links between infection and the development of acute and chronic diseases -- including pneumonia, meningitis/encephalitis, cancer and mental illness -- in these hot-spot countries.