ON THE CUTTING EDGE: Preventing Pandemics
In a New York Times op-ed, biologist Nathan Wolfe, director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, makes the case that closely monitoring farmers, hunters and other people exposed to animals in such viral “hotspots” as the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia, “we can capture viruses at the very moment they enter human populations, and thus develop the ability to predict and perhaps even prevent pandemics”:
We can also identify a virus’s genetic and immunological signatures and other biological information that is needed to create diagnostic tests, vaccines and treatments - so that when a disease appears, it is possible to respond as quickly as possible.
Had similar monitoring systems been in place at farms in Mexico, where the current swine flu outbreak is assumed to have emerged, perhaps we would have been able to identify the movement of the virus at or near the point where it entered humans. Such information could have significantly speeded up our response. …
Our current global public health strategies are reminiscent of cardiology in the 1950s - when doctors focused solely on responding to heart attacks and ignored the whole idea of prevention.
We needn’t have been so surprised by the swine flu last week, and we must make sure that we are not caught off guard by the epidemics that will certainly follow it.
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