The U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), is publishing the subject Request for Information (RFI) in order to obtain information and input from all interested public and private parties on Infectious Disease (with Epidemic or Pandemic

credit: British Council

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potential) Standby and Augment Capacity for a Humanitarian Emergency.

This only applies to Infectious Disease events that require designation of a Level-3 Interagency Standing Committee (IASC) and those has been declared a Public Health Emergency (PHEIC) of International Concern (or are the equivalent of a PHEIC).

This new Standby Capacity project will address critical, multi-sectoral response actor capacity gaps needed to maintain technical and operational readiness to ensure rapid response to infectious diseases outbreaks with epidemics or pandemic potential (i.e.

influenza, viral hemorrhagic fevers, etc.) that reach the scale of a humanitarian emergency.

This may include activities such as (but not limited to) contingency planning; the development or adaptation of toolkits, training, or technical guidance; establishment of rapid response teams; and enhancing coordination mechanisms.

Responses to each question are optional and a respondent may select to which questions it chooses to respond.

Responses must be succinct, specific, clear, and written in English.

Responses to specific questions should be directly related to that particular query.

General feedback may be provided at the end of the response.

Respondents can only submit ONE response per individual or organization.

All responses should be sent to 720FDA18APS0001@ofda.gov.

USAID/OFDA seeks to incorporate feedback from a wide range of sources in its planning process with the aim of addressing critical, multi-sectoral response actor capacity gaps for infectious diseases at the humanitarian emergency scale.

To that end, USAID/OFDA requests input from all interested parties to provide experience and evidence-based suggestions to the following specific questions:
● What are gaps of your organization that limit your ability to respond to a large scale infectious disease outbreak that becomes a humanitarian emergency? ● How does your organization prepare to respond and coordinate across relevant sectors? ● What are your organization's strengths in responding to a large scale infectious disease outbreak that becomes a humanitarian emergency? What would be needed to augment and/or scale up your organization’s response capacity? ● How might your organization scale traditional humanitarian response interventions to apply them to an infectious disease humanitarian response? ● What is your organization’s personnel policy on responding to infectious diseases? ● What are your organization’s biggest technical needs when considering responding to a large scale infectious disease outbreak that becomes a humanitarian emergency?