Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) and Pandemics- a global health problem
SARI pandemics occur every ~23 years and are a significant health threat (~7M COVID-19 deaths). SARI cause significant death and disability (4th highest worldwide) during inter-pandemic periods, particularly seasonally.
Beyond Pandemic Preparedness-Building on our COVID-19 experience
The 2009 H1N1 pandemic highlighted an inadequate and ineffective clinical research response. This led the HRB-Irish Critical Care-Clinical Trials Network and partners to develop a national and global pandemic preparedness programme, greatly increasing our COVID-19 response with 100,000’s of patients participating in studies globally, describing clinical SARI, current clinical practice and delivering 14 new treatment recommendations saving ten’s of thousands of lives and driving discoveries (i.e. genetics associated with severe disease). However, despite this great progress it is clear that there is much more preparatory work needed before the next pandemic.
PRIME Ireland-Developing Pandemic Resilience in Ireland and beyond
We propose our PRIME Ireland programme of pandemic resilience, a coordinated clinical research response building on our current programme, adequately preparing Ireland to respond even more effectively during the next pandemic. PRIME-Ireland will address identified gaps through 6 work packages: i) ‘REFINE’: improving acceptability and efficiency of studies through methodology research and incorporating the patient voice (PPI). ii) ‘PERFORM’: four clinical studies for children and adults describing SARI epidemiology in Ireland, allowing us to benchmark our practices against hospitals globally with additional biological sampling allowing us to understand novel infections and host responses. iii) ‘PREDICT’ will develop a ‘tailored’ precision medicine approach to SARI- identifying which patients may benefit even more (or not at all) from particular treatments. FUTURE STARS develops trainees/future trialists, INTEGRATE coordinates the programme across all patient groups, nationally and internationally, while APPLY transforms results into clinical practice/policy and public health responses.
PRIME IRELAND-will deliver an integrated clinical pandemic research response.
