As we so often hear, we live in an ever more connected world. In general, this is a profound blessing. It generates economic opportunity and accelerates innovation.  As we are now seeing, this connectedness also entails deadly risks. The first Ebola case to be diagnosed in the United States shows, once again, that health challenges anywhere can create health challenges everywhere.  We must appreciate that this frightening “case” is, in fact, a person fighting for his life against an aggressive hemorrhagic fever with a high death rate. But we also must understand that America has an incredibly responsive public health system that will ensure the virus is quickly contained, and that anyone suffering from it receives high-quality care in medical isolation.  While the facts should reassure Americans that Ebola doesn’t pose a direct threat to them, we should seize this moment to challenge the excessive complacency that many people in wealthier nations feel toward “distant” health crises in poorer places. The Texas patient’s case should refocus our commitment to the principle that everyone deserves the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life.  If the strength of America’s public-health system is an ultimate safeguard against Ebola outbreaks here, then the comparative weakness of such systems in West Africa and elsewhere is the ultimate risk factor for outbreaks there.  The health care infrastructure of the nations most heavily affected by Ebola today – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – had been weakened by regional conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s, which degraded basic health services and limited their capacity to accommodate Ebola patients, trace their potential contacts, and communicate effectively with stricken areas.  The rebuilding of West Africa’s Ebola-ravaged health services will be a tough challenge, but it is of the utmost importance. One feature of this epidemic is its disproportionate impact on health workers, many of whom have succumbed to Ebola themselves. As a result, we could see further reductions in public health capacity in the region in the short term.  We’re also likely to see downstream health impacts because so many people have simply given in to the outbreak: Hundreds of parents in Liberia have stopped taking their children to health posts to be immunized against preventable diseases. Pregnant women have stopped going to hospitals to deliver their children. Sick people have stopped seeking treatment for malaria and other infectious diseases at local clinics. And some West African communities have stopped planting crops or trading goods because they fear coming into contact with people carrying the Ebola virus.  In this desperate context, public and private partners will need to step forward in the months ahead to help restore the basic functions of primary health care services and provide stressed communities with temporary food aid.  The scale of West Africa’s Ebola outbreak demands a global response comparable to those for earthquakes, floods and other humanitarian emergencies. But it also requires that we take steps – right now – to prevent future crises.  Indeed, to prepare for any future outbreaks, it’s worth referring back to the Sars crisis that affected more than 8,000 people worldwide a decade ago. That outbreak led to significant global improvements in disease surveillance and in the recognition of the acute need for better cooperation across borders and among national health agencies.  But we need a long-range commitment to develop effective, low-cost treatment and prevention for diseases that affect the world’s poorest people. We must also address the market failures that have made this so difficult in the past. The only way to stay ahead of emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola and dengue – as well as the rapidly evolving threats posed by drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis and malaria – is to stay fully invested in a robust R&D pipeline for new drugs, new vaccines, and other life-saving tools. The market for a cure cannot fail.  The spread of Ebola reminds us of how emergency-health preparedness can quite literally become a matter of life and death. Right now, we need to help unaffected countries surrounding Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone launch emergency operations centers that can monitor health data and act quickly to identify and isolate cases introduced by international travelers.  Nigeria, in an astounding example of timely emergency response, contained an Ebola outbreak in Africa’s most populous nation in part by reassigning people who had been dedicated to polio-elimination efforts to the suddenly even more urgent task of identifying the contacts of an infected Liberian businessman who had flown from Monrovia to Lagos.  Ebola’s appearance in America – by way of an infected man who flew from Monrovia to Brussels to Washington to Dallas – demands a proper perspective. In response to the concerning but containable threat of Ebola in the United States, avoiding excessive alarm is wise; avoiding excessive complacency, wiser still.
Sue Desmond-Hellmann: If the world doesn’t learn from this outbreak, one day we’ll have a real pandemic on our hands