UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)

About

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents and other health threats. We provide intellectual, scientific and operational leadership at national and local level, as well as on the global stage, to make the nation’s health secure.

Role In the National Laboratories Alliance

Our role in the NLA is our ability to bring together a vast array of capabilities and specialisms across our organisation and in other organisations to tackle a range issues.

Our scale, and ability to bring together colleagues in an agile and cohesive way, allows us to quickly respond to emerging threats e.g. COVID-19, polonium, swine flu, monkeypox, Ebola and Novichok. During the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, UKHSA’s predecessor organisation PHE coordinated 473 deployments to support the response effort from a range of organisations including universities, the NLA, NHS Trusts and private companies significantly reducing the turnaround time and disease transmission, all of which helped bring the epidemic under control.