The Rockefeller Foundation’s $22,000,000 Disease Surveillance Networks (DSN)
Initiative was formally launched in 2007 (building on important and ground-breaking
work that had begun as early as 1999) to address the rapid emergence of new infectious diseases, most often from zoonotic sources, with pandemic potential. The global
health and economic impacts of SARS, H5N1 (Avian Flu) and H1N1 (Swine Flu) had
raised awareness of global pandemic threats, which deeply affect the world’s poorest
people. Common drivers of pandemics include increased cross-border trade, mobility
and migration of humans and animals, livestock productions systems, population
density, viral adaptation and ecological shifts as a result of climate change.