About DiseaseChaser
Aniwaby DiseaseChaser
DiseaseChaser began as a phrase Dr Michael Selorm Avumegah coined for himself — a personal commitment to keep showing up and fighting neglected tropical diseases. It has since grown into a recognised name. It started long before the branding: in community-based outreach on neglected tropical diseases in Ghana, in Buruli ulcer wards across rural Ghana and Victoria, Australia, and in the conviction that these diseases stay neglected largely because the people carrying them are too. That same instinct for turning up where a pathogen was doing the most damage later carried him into mpox cohorts in Uganda, Nipah survivor communities in Bangladesh, and a molecular clamp vaccine platform racing to answer COVID-19. What began as one person's refusal to look away has become something more deliberate: a professional commitment to preventing disease among the most at-risk populations through appropriate and effective means, wherever geography, funding or politics would otherwise leave them exposed.
We work with ministries of health, multilateral agencies, funders and implementing partners on the technical and governance layer that decides whether a pandemic response actually functions — surveillance quality, vaccine development standards, biospecimen custody, and who holds the leverage when a sample crosses a border. Engagements range from a half-day briefing to a retained seat on a scientific advisory board, but the standard is constant: judgement independent enough to say the uncomfortable thing, and technical enough that a ministry, funder or agency can act on it.
The section below sets out the enterprise itself. The ways we work together, our field record and the evidence behind it each have their own page.
We work toward a global health system in which the speed and quality of an epidemic response depend on preparation and governance — not on the wealth, geography or negotiating power of the country where a pathogen first appears.
Our mission is to make the unglamorous machinery of outbreak response — standards, samples, assays, surveillance — work in favour of the communities most exposed to disease, and to help the health systems carrying that burden fund and govern their own capability rather than remain dependent on it.
Enterprise
Aniwa by DiseaseChaser is an independent health-intelligence and advisory enterprise built on a ground-level view of disease prevention: that epidemic outcomes are shaped long before a crisis makes headlines — in surveillance quality, exposure-screening capability, diagnostic pathways, vaccine readiness, and the governance of samples, data, and evidence. DiseaseChaser is the technical engine behind the enterprise, and Aniwa Health Intelligence is the platform through which that expertise is organised, scaled and applied across Africa and the wider Global South.
The enterprise is organised as four portfolios rather than a list of services, because intelligence, readiness, partnership quality and research governance fail when they are run as separate workstreams instead of one connected system.
Operating sequence
The flagship intelligence platform, and the front door to the enterprise: a governed, human-in-the-loop environment that helps institutions sense, structure, verify, assess and act on outbreak and health-security signals.
Reducing avoidable health threats before they become emergencies, by building practical readiness, diagnostics capability, exposure pathways and operational assurance.
Keeping health systems and partnerships functional, trusted and coordinated under pressure, by linking resilience, governance, continuity and community legitimacy.
Designing research and evidence systems that protect local authority, support equitable governance, and generate durable value where data and samples originate.
