International Community Must Step Up Understanding, Surveillance, Control Of Infectious Diseases To Prevent Further Outbreaks

Washington Post: Fighting MERS, again
Editorial Board

“…After the World Health Organization was slow to respond on Ebola, a debate is underway about how to strengthen global rapid response to disease outbreaks. In today’s world, a virus or bacterium for which there is no cure or treatment can be spread across continents by one patient on an airplane. There is no fail-safe way to prevent this, but it is clear that surveillance, diagnostics, transparency, infection control, and determined efforts to understand how and why a disease spreads are absolutely essential. Unfortunately, in one way or another, these have been missing far too often, and the pathogens are on the march” (6/12).

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