Report examines pandemic-fighting divides

EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on global animal, environmental and human health, has generated a report maintaining there are gaps in pandemics related events readiness.

The organization presented Building Resilience to Biothreats at an event earlier this month featuring Robert Kadlec, the Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

“The Ebola outbreak in West Africa took the world by surprise,” William Karesh, EcoHealth Alliance executive vice president for Health and Policy and co-author, said. “But it also showed us firsthand how quickly disease outbreaks can go from regional events to global problems. We have to work together as a global community to neutralize these threats.”

EcoHealth Alliance officials said the work categorizes biodefense activity into four pillars – prevent, detect, respond and recover, revealing prevent and recover are massively overlooked.

The prevention pillar includes systems, policies, and procedures which serve to determine, assess, avoid, mitigate and reduce threats by reducing vulnerability and exposure, according to the analysis. Recover seeks to restore and strengthen normal operations following outbreaks.

“An increasingly small world–where a person, or pathogen, can travel nearly anywhere in a day–requires increasingly global solutions,” Ellen Carlin, EcoHealth Alliance senior Health and Policy Specialist and one of five co-authors of the report, said. “Our suggestions aim to engage stakeholders from multiple sectors in order to combine strengths, rather than silo them.”