Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much support the UK provided to global disease surveillance in each of the last five years, (a) bilaterally and (b) multilaterally.

Infectious disease surveillance is critical for global health security. The UK supports global efforts to strengthen surveillance through multilateral organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

At the country and regional levels, our country-based health system strengthening programmes, the International Health Regulations Strengthening Project, the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team and the Tackling Deadly Diseases in Africa Programme, support improvements in surveillance capacity in the Africa region. This includes working with the African Union's Centres for Disease Control and WHO's Africa Regional Office. The UK also supports low and middle-income countries through the Fleming Fund to improve surveillance of antimicrobial resistance.

The UK reports Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend using standard OECD Development Assistance Committee codes, which do not track how much ODA is spent on disease surveillance specifically.