How the world can prepare for the next pandemic
The world is suffering from yet another virus, and while the heroic efforts of our healthcare staff in the NHS, and across the world is incredibly creditworthy, there were efforts we could have done before, to prevent the damage it has caused already.
While we may be experiencing an unprecedented pandemic, it is certainly not the first. In fact the most recent Ebola crisis of 2014 was incredibly lethal, killing more than 11,000 worldwide. Although many say the current corona virus is the worst of our lifetimes; the virus has already taken the lives of 140,000 worldwide. There are numerous reasons why the current outbreak is more lethal and deadly than ever before. Corona is a mutated virus of the SARS virus which caused the breakout in 2002, with an increased infectious rate (R=2.5), and so the ‘spreadability’ of this virus is significantly higher, than both the previous SARS virus, and the common flu (influenza). With the growing globalisation we also experiencing, and the amplified spreading of the virus the combination was never going to be pleasant. Although if globalisation is the cause of damage in pandemics, it is also the solution to the problem, according to Ron Klain, who was appointed to run the Ebola crisis response in 2014. Ron said how it was essential to learn from how public health officials need to be ready and prepared, while doctors and scientists continued to find vaccines and treatments.
Bill gates had already predicted the pandemic back in 2015, and he is currently involved with working with top government officials in the US to combat this outbreak. He mentioned that the best was to tackle pandemics like this one was to ensure “we build a really good response system”. By this he meant using technology to graph the spreading of a pathogen, and mapping its journey to limit its effect. The concept of social isolation is out best mechanism of defence, until the world’s leading scientists can develop a vaccine. This process can be done more carefully and with much more organisation in the future if we can prepare our medical professionals, prepare our technology for developing vaccines and coordinate on an international level the health systems around the world so that as soon as the next pathogen is detected, we can coordinate an international response, for both stopping the pathogen in its tracks, and to develop a vaccine quickly, and safely.
While the international community is doing an amazing job, battling the virus through our frontline healthcare workers, and huge scientific community racing to find the COVID vaccine if the necessary steps are taken, in the future we can much better prepared to tackle the next pandemic.
