Emma Ross

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A lab technician works in the P3, the Pasteur Institute's laboratory dedicated to the Ebola virus, in Bangui in the Central African Republic on 31 May, 2018. (Photo by FLORENT VERGNES/AFP via Getty Images)

InternacionalSalud Pública

Recent global health emergencies have exposed the vulnerabilities that arise from inadequate capacity and capability to detect outbreaks rapidly and contain them before they escalate and spread uncontrollably.

For example, the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014-16 and the COVID-19 pandemic not only killed thousands and millions of people respectively, they also devastated economies and undermined global health security.

Laboratories are a crucial part of the system for disease surveillance, helping to detect outbreaks early, assist a robust response and recovery, and carry out research to improve protection against threats from high-consequence pathogens.

For laboratories to fulfil that role, effective biosafety and biosecurity measures are an absolute priority.…  Seguir leyendo »

The World Health Organisation (WHO) supervise the arrival of coronavirus vaccines at Khartoum airport in Sudan through COVAX, a UN-led initiative to help poorer countries. Photo by ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP via Getty Images.

InternacionalSalud Pública

Although the COVID-19 response saw remarkable institutional innovations focused on controlling the pandemic once it had begun – notably the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) with its vaccine arm COVAX – the pandemic still frustratingly demonstrated once more the enormous costs of failing to invest adequately in prevention and control measures and other global health activities to protect the world.

The sad reality is that despite an overwhelming humanitarian and financial case for fully funding ongoing international measures against COVID-19 as well as longer-term measures to prepare for and prevent future pandemics, the international community has so far failed to mobilize the level and breadth of political commitment needed.…  Seguir leyendo »

High-level complex of physiologically active antibiotic substance extracted from blastema at the Arctic Innovation Center (AIC) of Ammosov, North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk. Photo: Yuri Smityuk/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis.

InternacionalSalud Pública

There is an urgent need to bring global governance to the effort to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics. The issue of increasing antibiotic resistance, and the need to use antibiotics more wisely, has gained recognition at the highest political echelons, and there is evidence for antibiotic-conserving interventions that all countries could adopt to reverse the global threat.

This confluence of factors makes the possibility of negotiating a global treaty aiming to reduce misuse and overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals more viable than ever before. It is an opportunity that should be seized.

Antibiotics are a core tool of modern medicine, but are increasingly being rendered ineffective by the ability of bacteria to develop resistance.…  Seguir leyendo »