New pandemic insurance to prevent crises through early payouts

By Alex Whiting LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In the wake of the Ebola crisis, a quiet revolution is taking place that is set to transform the way governments and aid agencies respond to major disease outbreaks. Analysts are developing insurance schemes that could turn the humanitarian system on its head, by paying out money as soon as a disease breaks out to stop it becoming an international crisis, rather than trying to raise funds after the event. The World Bank, the African Union, a consortium of aid agencies and experts in the private sector are starting to do the sums and figure out what such schemes could look like. What the crisis of last year has done is to cause an upheaval in the whole of the humanitarian sector in terms of thinking of how to mitigate disasters, rather than just respond afterwards," Gordon Woo, a catastrophist specializing in pandemics at Risk Management Solutions, said in a telephone interview.



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