The Pandemic Fund is a Financial Intermediary Fund hosted at the World Bank, established in November 2022. It finances pandemic preparedness infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries, including surveillance systems, laboratory capacity, health workforce development and emergency operations centres, with grants from G7 and other sovereign donors.

Is the Pandemic Fund involved in the Bundibugyo Ebola response?

The Pandemic Fund was named by Africa CDC in its 16 May 2026 coordination call as a partner in the Bundibugyo response, alongside WHO, UNICEF and the African Medicines Agency. Its grant-making mandate aligns with the preparedness infrastructure gaps the Ituri surveillance failure exposed.Source: Africa CDC 16 May 2026 coordination statement

What is the Pandemic Fund and who controls it?

The Pandemic Fund is a Financial Intermediary Fund hosted at the World Bank, established at the 2022 G20 Bali Summit. It is governed by a board of donor and recipient countries and disburses grants to low- and middle-income countries for pandemic preparedness infrastructure.Source: World Bank / Pandemic Fund governing documents

Background

The Pandemic Fund is a Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) hosted at the World Bank, established in November 2022 following a G20 decision at Indonesia's Bali Summit. It was created to address the structural funding gap in global pandemic preparedness: the chronic under-investment in outbreak response infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that COVID-19 exposed. The fund pools contributions from sovereign donors (primarily G7 governments) and disburses grants to LMICs for surveillance, laboratory capacity, health workforce development, and emergency operations centres.

On 5 June 2026 the Pandemic Fund activated its Emergency Financing Procedures, mobilising up to $220.6 million in grant financing for the Bundibugyo Ebola response, behind a joint Africa CDC-WHO Continental Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan. The fund's own statement named the gap plainly: no licensed vaccine, no treatment, and no rapid, reliable diagnostic test exists for this Ebola species. Africa CDC had named the Pandemic Fund as a response partner on its 16 May coordination call alongside WHO, UNICEF and the African Medicines Agency. On 17 June 2026, the fund's Governing Board went further, accrediting Africa CDC as an Implementing Entity: the first African Union institution and the first continental public health body to gain that status, letting Africa CDC apply directly for Pandemic Fund grants instead of routing requests through a World Bank or UN intermediary.

The Pandemic Fund operates at the intersection of two structural issues the Bundibugyo outbreak makes visible: surveillance gaps in high-conflict, low-resource settings like Ituri, and the USAID funding withdrawal that removed embedded outbreak-response infrastructure from the same region. Its grant timelines, typically months, do not match a response needing surge capacity in days, but the Emergency Financing Procedures are designed to compress that gap. The direct-access accreditation sits alongside a wider push toward African-controlled response financing, including GAVI's $189 million African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator top-up approved on 2 July 2026.