Pandemic surveillance money flows to airports and AI, but data integration lags

The Nature Conference India 2026 ran at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in Karnataka from 14 to 16 October. Bhaskar English reported its conclusions on 3 November.

Lauren Gardner worked on the widely followed COVID-19 tracking dashboard at Johns Hopkins University. She told the conference that India needs an integrated system to bring health-related data together. Collecting data is not enough, she said. It has to be integrated and analysed in time to be useful. Wastewater testing can flag early signs of infection in an area. Genomic surveillance tracks how viruses change. AI can analyse the combined data to identify places at risk. Rada Savic of the University of California, San Francisco, described work on cutting tuberculosis treatment from six months to three or four. She said AI and mathematical models can help assess drug combinations and dosages.

The gap matters beyond the conference hall. A finding that stays inside one country's database does not protect its neighbours. Whether national systems will connect to each other, or to the WHO's 2030 network, is not yet public.

WHO sets a 24-hour detection goal for 2030

The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence published its strategy at the World Health Summit in Berlin in mid-October, heise reported on 29 October. Every country should be able to detect and assess a new health threat within 24 hours of its emergence, the goal states. The WHO wants the strategy in place by 2030. The plan leans on AI-powered simulations, genome sequencing and open source intelligence, meaning the scanning of publicly available information for early signals. The hub has worked with more than 160 countries and 190 partners. Germany's Federal Ministry of Health put €90 million into the centre, set up in Berlin in September 2021 by Angela Merkel and WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. WHO member states adopted an international pandemic agreement at the World Health Assembly in May 2025.

Nigeria funds airport biosecurity

The Federal Executive Council approved a N45.8 billion biosecurity and disease surveillance system for five international airports, Daily Trust reported on 28 October. The council met on Wednesday under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Ali Pate, the coordinating minister of health and social welfare, said the project is a 20-year public-private partnership concession awarded to BioHealth Consortium. The airports are Murtala Muhammed in Lagos, Nnamdi Azikiwe in Abuja, Mallam Aminu Kano in Kano, Port Harcourt and Akanu Ibiam in Enugu. More than 18 million passengers pass through Nigeria's airports each year, Pate said. The system covers wastewater surveillance for pathogens linked to aircraft. It also covers air and surface sampling, cargo and baggage monitoring, and rapid diagnostic laboratories at the points of entry. Operations will be integrated with the NCDC, Port Health Services, the Nigeria Customs Service, the Nigeria Immigration Service and NAFDAC. Pate said Nigeria confirmed an imported Ebola case in October and the patient recovered after treatment in the country.

The data problem is local and biological

Gardner's caveat was blunt. The technology only works if local data is accurate and reliable.

Naveen Kumar, director of the National Institute of Virology, said 300 to 400 new viruses are added to the known list every year, which now holds more than 17,000. He named globalisation and cross-border mobility, climate change and rising temperatures, and deforestation as factors behind new infections. Kumar also said more than 70% of infectious diseases are transmitted from animals to humans. He said scientists still lack the tools to establish whether SARS-CoV-2 was engineered or emerged naturally.

Marion Koopmans of Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands warned at the same conference that climate change could push dengue and malaria into new regions. That is a surveillance problem as much as a climate one.

What to watch next

The WHO strategy rests on five initiatives, including Collaborative Surveillance and Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources. The hub plans to develop advanced AI capabilities for automated signal detection and risk assessment. The WHO urged caution about AI in health care as early as 2023. It warned that generative models such as ChatGPT could pose risks to patients without adequate evaluation.

In Nigeria, the assets revert to the federal government at the end of the 20-year concession.

The money is real, the integration is not proven

Germany's €90 million bought a hub that now coordinates across more than 160 countries and 190 partners. Nigeria's N45.8 billion buys equipment at five airports serving more than 18 million passengers a year. Neither figure says anything about whether the data moves. Pate said COVID-19 exposed significant vulnerabilities in managing public health threats that cross borders. Under the Nigerian arrangement, the private partner designs, finances, builds, operates and maintains the facilities, while the government provides policy, institutional and regulatory oversight.

Whether these national systems will connect to each other, or to the WHO's 2030 network, is not yet public. The contracts and the deadlines now exist. The interoperability does not.