The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?
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Last year, with the centennial of the 1918 flu looming, I started looking into whether America is prepared for the next pandemic. I fully expected that the answer would be no. What I found, after talking with dozens of experts, was more complicated—reassuring in some ways, but even more worrying than I’d imagined in others. Certainly, medicine has advanced considerably during the past century. The United States has nationwide vaccination programs, advanced hospitals, the latest diagnostic tests. In the National Institutes of Health, it has the world’s largest biomedical research establishment, and in the CDC, arguably the world’s strongest public-health agency. America is as ready to face down new diseases as any country in the world.
Yet even the U.S. is disturbingly vulnerable—and in some respects is becoming quickly more so. It depends on a just-in-time medical economy, in which stockpiles are limited and even key items are made to order. Most of the intravenous bags used in the country are manufactured in Puerto Rico, so when Hurricane Maria devastated the island last September, the bags fell in short supply. Some hospitals were forced to inject saline with syringes—and so syringe supplies started running low too. The most common lifesaving drugs all depend on long supply chains that include India and China—chains that would likely break in a severe pandemic. “Each year, the system gets leaner and leaner,” says Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It doesn’t take much of a hiccup anymore to challenge it.”
Perhaps most important, the U.S. is prone to the same forgetfulness and shortsightedness that befall all nations, rich and poor—and the myopia has worsened considerably in recent years. Public-health programs are low on money; hospitals are stretched perilously thin; crucial funding is being slashed. And while we tend to think of science when we think of pandemic response, the worse the situation, the more the defense depends on political leadership.
When Ebola flared in 2014, the science-minded President Barack Obama calmly and quickly took the reins. The White House is now home to a president who is neither calm nor science-minded. We should not underestimate what that may mean if risk becomes reality.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...e-hits/561734/
Next flu pandemic is matter of when, not if
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A global flu pandemic is a realistic threat that the world must prepare for, the World Health Organization said March 11.
The organization revealed its global flu strategy for 2019-30, which focuses on addressing both seasonal flu outbreaks and global pandemics.
The WHO's flu strategy outlines two main initiatives:
Ensure every country has a strong flu surveillance and response program
Develop tools to better prevent, detect or treat the flu that are accessible to all countries
"The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said in a press release. "The question is not if we will have another pandemic, but when. We must be vigilant and prepared — the cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of prevention."
https://www.beckershospitalreview.co...en-not-if.html
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8 Things to know about pandemic influenza
11 March 2019
The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present. A pandemic can arise when a new influenza virus that hasn't affected humans before emerges, spreads and causes illness in humans.
Influenza viruses are unpredictable – we can never be certain of when or from where the next pandemic will arise. However, another influenza pandemic is inevitable. In this interconnected world, the question is not if we will have another pandemic, but when.
To protect people across the globe from this threat, the WHO has released a Global Influenza Strategy for 2019-2030. The new strategy is the most comprehensive and far reaching influenza strategy that WHO has developed. The strategy outlines a framework for WHO, countries and partners to work together to prepare for, prevent, and control the influenza.
https://www.who.int/news-room/featur...emic-influenza