Pandemic Preparedness and Response
Pandemic Preparedness and Response
Our Approach to Pandemic Preparedness and Health Security
Pandemics expose the strength—or fragility—of health systems. Management Sciences for Health (MSH) works with governments and partners to build resilient systems that detect, prevent, and respond to disease threats while continuing to deliver essential health services.
Our approach integrates pandemic preparedness into the everyday functioning of health systems—from community surveillance and laboratory networks to supply chains, governance, and health workforce capacity—so countries can act quickly when threats emerge.
Pandemic preparedness and health security
Pandemics test the strength of health systems. When surveillance systems fail to detect outbreaks early, when supply chains break down, or when health workers lack the tools to respond, health emergencies can escalate quickly and disrupt essential care.
At MSH, pandemic preparedness is not a standalone activity. It is the result of strong, well-functioning health systems that can detect threats early, respond effectively, and continue delivering essential services.
We work with governments and partners to strengthen the institutions and systems that make health security possible—ensuring countries are equipped not only to respond to emergencies, but to prevent and contain them.
Our Approach
MSH supports countries to build sustainable preparedness through investments in the core capabilities that underpin health security:
- Leadership and governance: Supporting national and subnational leadership to coordinate preparedness planning, emergency response, and cross-sector collaboration.
- Surveillance and early detection: Strengthening disease surveillance systems, laboratory networks, and data use so countries can detect and respond to outbreaks quickly.
- Resilient pharmaceutical and supply systems: Ensuring medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, and essential supplies remain available during health emergencies.
- Health workforce readiness: Building the capacity of health workers and managers to prevent infection, manage outbreaks, and sustain service delivery during crises.
- Community engagement and trust: Working with communities to strengthen risk communication, build trust, and support early response.
- Continuity of essential services: Helping health systems maintain primary health care and other critical services even during major disruptions.
Health Security Through Strong Systems
Experience from COVID-19 reinforced a critical lesson: preparedness cannot be built during a crisis. It must be embedded in the everyday functioning of health systems.
Across Africa, Asia, and other regions, MSH works with governments to integrate preparedness into broader health system strengthening—linking surveillance, supply chains, workforce development, and primary health care.
By strengthening these foundations, countries are better equipped to prevent outbreaks, respond effectively when threats emerge, and protect the health of their populations.
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Our Response to COVID-19
Since COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, MSH—working through a range of global, regional, and bilateral projects—has supported 27 countries in effectively maintaining essential health services and confronting immediate pandemic challenges and underlying systemic weaknesses drawing on our experience supporting country responses to HIV, tuberculosis, Ebola, avian flu, pneumonic plague, cholera epidemics, and other public health emergencies since 1971. Between 2021 and 2022, our teams supported the COVID-19 vaccine introduction in 17 countries.
MSH launched our team-based Leading and Managing for Results in Pandemics experiential learning program in Uganda, and is supporting its use in Bangladesh, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Peru, and Rwanda to enhance the capacity of teams involved in emergency preparedness, response, and recovery efforts.
In Malawi, our COVID-19 awareness activities—including local radio broadcasts and community dialogues—reached more than 2.3 million people. In Haiti, we reached nearly 1.5 million people with similar awareness-raising campaigns over a two-month period.
Our MTaPS program supported 11 countries to strengthen critical functions such as improving commodity management; developing more than 60 policies, protocols, standards and guidelines for effective COVID-19 vaccine deployment; and training more than 5,000 people on COVID-19 vaccine-related topics.
In Uganda,when COVID-19 hit, local authorities relied on a robust electronic information system to mount a coordinated and effective local response that ensured adequate amounts of gloves, masks, and other personal protective equipment and a steady supply of essential health commodities wherever they were needed.
In Benin, MSH helped plan and execute a COVID-19 vaccination campaign that resulted in 428,000 people being fully immunized over a period of six weeks. We are also helping the Ministry of Health digitize its immunization management system and training staff on its use.
In the Philippines, through our MTaPS program, we trained more than 14,000 health workers from public and private facilities by using a virtual platform, so that health workers received the necessary information on IPC, health care waste management, and emergency supply chain management.
In Afghanistan, Benin, Madagascar, and Pakistan, we worked with community stakeholders and local governance structures to establish epidemic early warning systems, building on experience creating effective district-level Ebola surveillance systems in Côte d’Ivoire in 2015-17.
We aided Ukraine in contracting a third-party logistics provider to warehouse and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, supporting delivery and administration of 1.2 million doses in just 6 months.
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