Cost effective actions can steeply reduce the risk of pathogen spill over and must be implemented rapidly in zoonotic spill over hotspots such as Indonesia to prevent us from the devastating impact of future pandemics. Additionally, as the outgoing President of the G20, Indonesia’s government has the unique opportunity to play a global leadership role and inspire other countries to implement appropriate policies and actions to reduce the risk of pathogen spill over. But there are several key barriers impeding Indonesia’s government from acting on spill over prevention. These include lack of a forum or process to bring officials together from different relevant agencies to collaborate, incomplete understanding of the policy reforms and actions that should be prioritized, inadequate human resources and expertise (e.g. vets), limited funds to monitor, detect, and rapidly respond to prevent or control zoonotic disease outbreaks, lack of a robust disease surveillance and response monitoring system, a weakly regulated commercial wildlife trade and a thriving illegal wildlife trade, and little civil society knowledge and capacity on One Health and associated aspects.   

This project aims to catalyse action by Indonesian policymakers to implement spill over prevention policies, including through strengthening their understanding of effective policy reforms and actions, and the dialogue among the relevant national agencies to effectively deliver these reforms. At the same time, we will raise awareness and support about spill over prevention policy reforms and actions among G20 leaders through Indonesia’s G20 post-Presidency, as well as in the ASEAN region and East Asia. It is co-led by Preventing Pandemics at the Source and the Wildlife Conservation Society in Indonesia, in partnership with ASRI.