Science: Health security’s blind spot
Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance

“…[T]o achieve sustainable global epidemic preparedness, we need to stimulate the development of cutting-edge diagnostic technologies — both for laboratories and for use in the field in remote locations — and make them available and affordable in low-income countries. … Early detection through reliable, available, and efficient testing is essential to stopping outbreaks before they spread. With many diseases presenting similar first symptoms, it’s all too easy to get a diagnosis wrong and potentially miss an outbreak. And given the ease and speed at which pathogens can now travel in the modern urban-dense global village, any delay in diagnosis will inevitably and increasingly be measured in lives lost” (3/9).