The Rise of Global Pandemics
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report , one of the top five global risks today – in terms of potential impact - is the spread of infectious diseases. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa dramatically raised awareness of the global burden of infectious disease and raised questions about the preparedness of public health systems. In February 2016, the public scrambled to understand the implications of the Zika virus after the World Health Organization designated it as an international public health emergency. Indeed, experts agree that public health outbreaks and epidemics are likely to become ever more complex and challenging. A 2014 study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, examined the global changes in the frequency of outbreaks of infectious disease between 1980 and 2013. The dataset covered 219 countries around the world. The researchers, based at Brown University, concluded the number of outbreaks, and the number of kinds of disease, have increased significantly since 1980 .
Naturally, this resulted in an increased focus on epidemiology - the study of the spread, causes and consequences of disease. In the past few decades, defining and examining the global distribution of infectious disease, in both time and location, has become a major research priority. These “spatio-temporal patterns” allow researchers to examine how and why infectious disease does or does not spread. In this context, three terms are used to describe disease distribution:
• Epidemic: a widespread increase in the observed rates of disease in a given population. Diseases such as mumps, measles and cholera can become epidemics, depending on a range of factors.
• Endemic: a consistently heightened rate of disease observed in and associated with a given population over time. For example, malaria is endemic in a number of tropical zones in the world.
• Pandemic: a sudden increase in the observed rates of disease across many populations globally. The most infamous is the 1918-19 flu pandemic, which killed millions around the globe .
Disease and epidemics have always been part of our world. Today we tackle approximately 700 occurrences of epidemics a year, affecting millions of people. The good news is that our healthcare systems are also advancing rapidly and we are continually getting better at prevention and treatment of diseases.
However, what is -relatively- new today is the globalization of these epidemics, their ability to rapidly spread. A plague outbreak in a local community in India today is not an obscure local event. It can quickly become a globalized event. Global pandemics have become a real threat, and have changed the risk equation. This equation is now on the mind of the public health community, the biology community, the national security community, and the global business community.
In a recent talk , Bill Gates made this point loud and clear: “today, if anything is going to kill over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes. Part of the reason for this is that we've invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents. But we've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We're not ready for the next epidemic”.
The main driver behind such an increased risk is globalization. Our world is getting more and connected (physically and virtually) like no era in humanity. Travel is becoming faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Globalization of business and leisure made it possible (and in some cases necessary) for everybody to be everywhere, all the time, all over the world. This trend will only accelerate, we are expanding our global “connectivity” infrastructure almost daily.