This guidance is an update of WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics, published March 2005 (WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.5).
The United States and the world were unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, despite decades of warnings highlighting the inevitability of global pandemics and the need for international coordination. The failure to prioritize and adequately fund preparedness and effectively implement response plans has exacted a heavy human and economic price, and the crisis is not yet over. Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases are a threat to global and national security that neither the United States nor the world can afford to ignore. This Task Force proposes a comprehensive strategy that includes institutional reforms and policy innovations to help the United States and the multilateral system perform better in this crisis and when the next one emerges. Without increased U.S. leadership on and adequate investment in pandemic preparedness and response, the United States and the world will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to epidemic threats. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and are solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view.
Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.
Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.
#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.”—Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.
Encapsulating security : pharmaceutical defenses against biological danger -- Discovering a virus's achilles heel : flu fighting at molecular scale -- The pill always wins: Gilead Sciences, Roche and the birth of Tamiflu -- What a difference a day makes : the margin call for regulatory agencies -- Virtual blockbuster : bird flu and the pandemic of preparedness planning -- In the eye of the storm : global access, generics and intellectual property -- 'Ode to Tamiflu' : side effects, teenage 'suicides' and corporate liabilities -- Data backlash : Roche and Cochrane square up over clinical trial data -- 'To boldly go ... ' : pharmaceutical enterprises and global health security -- Epilogue : pharmaceuticals, security and molecular life
New York Times Bestseller For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work. Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.
Since the 2014 Ebola outbreak many public- and private-sector leaders have seen a need for improved management of global public health emergencies. The effects of the Ebola epidemic go well beyond the three hardest-hit countries and beyond the health sector. Education, child protection, commerce, transportation, and human rights have all suffered. The consequences and lethality of Ebola have increased interest in coordinated global response to infectious threats, many of which could disrupt global health and commerce far more than the recent outbreak. In order to explore the potential for improving international management and response to outbreaks the National Academy of Medicine agreed to manage an international, independent, evidence-based, authoritative, multistakeholder expert commission. As part of this effort, the Institute of Medicine convened four workshops in summer of 2015 to inform the commission report. The presentations and discussions from the Workshop on Research and Development of Medical Products are summarized in this report.
While much progress has been made on achieving the Millenium Development Goals over the last decade, the number and complexity of global health challenges has persisted. Growing forces for globalization have increased the interconnectedness of the world and our interdependency on other countries, economies, and cultures. Monumental growth in international travel and trade have brought improved access to goods and services for many, but also carry ongoing and ever-present threats of zoonotic spillover and infectious disease outbreaks that threaten all. Global Health and the Future Role of the United States identifies global health priorities in light of current and emerging world threats. This report assesses the current global health landscape and how challenges, actions, and players have evolved over the last decade across a wide range of issues, and provides recommendations on how to increase responsiveness, coordination, and efficiency â€" both within the U.S. government and across the global health field.
Nothing has rocked the foundations of the world, including the business world, more than the COVID- 19 pandemic. As businesses struggle and often flounder to cope, many business leaders are wondering how to deal with the unpredictable. How do you plan for something you can't predict? Strategist Lance Mortlock says you can, and you should. In this practical and accessible guide, Mortlock shows how scenario planning can identify risks and uncertainties, and predict a variety of different realities that will affect the future of any organization. He gives business leaders the tools to understand the forces emerging in a volatile, rapidly changing world so organizations are better prepared than their competitors to deal with them. This guide can be used by industries, the military, even governments, and, if executed properly, it will prepare leaders for every kind of unexpected challenge, from dramatic changes in commodity prices to wars and terrorist attacks and even pandemics. This book will help business leaders gain an earlier view of long-term forces that will affect their organizations performance, and be better prepared for future disasters on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic.