Submission + - Gates: More Agility Needed to Deal With Large Epidemics (nytimes.com) 1
jones_supa writes: Of the recent Ebola crisis, Bill Gates says that this disease has awaken the world to the fact that we are not properly prepared to deal with a global epidemic. Even if we signed up lots of experts right away, few organizations are capable of moving thousands of people, some of them infected, to different locations on the globe, with a week's notice. Data is another crucial problem. During the Ebola epidemic, the database that tracks cases has not always been accurate. This is partly because the situation is chaotic, but also because much of the case reporting has been done first on paper. Then there's our failure to invest in effective medical tools like tests, drugs and vaccines. On average it has taken an estimated one to three days for test results to come back — an eternity when you need to quarantine people. Drugs that might help stop Ebola were not tested in patients until after the epidemic had peaked, partly because the world has no clear process for expediting drug approvals. Compare all of this to the preparation that nations put into defense, which has high-quality mobile units ready to be deployed quickly.
