A new tool aims to help poor countries manage epidemics, before they devastate their health and finances.

The World Bank recently launched the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility an insurance market designed to quickly disburse funds to countries and agencies tackling infectious disease outbreaks.

Pandemics pose some of the biggest threats in the world to peoples lives and to economies, Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group, said in a statement. For the first time we will have a system that can move funding and teams of experts to the sites of outbreaks before they spin out of control.