World needs to invest, coordinate to prevent next pandemic, says Gilbert
According to Nikolaj Gilbert, president and chief executive officer of PATH, a global health organisation, the world needs to make significant investments to possibly prevent another pandemic.
Hyderabad: Ramping up disease surveillance systems and vaccine manufacturing facilities, coupled with expanding global research on potential pathogen candidates, can help the world improve its preparedness for the next pandemic, according to a top global bio-sciences expert.
According to Nikolaj Gilbert, president and chief executive officer of PATH, a global health organisation, the world needs to make significant investments to possibly prevent another pandemic.
“When people travel (around the world), we are going to see more epidemics. Local epidemics become regional or potential pandemics because we are more interconnected. Today, the world is more interconnected than it was 100 years ago or 50 years ago. There are more threats we need to capture before they become pandemics,” Gilbert told this newspaper.
Gilbert was in Hyderabad to attend a three-day meeting of the G20’s working group on health. He is the head of the Seattle-based non-profit health organisation that focuses on vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, devices, systems, and service innovations.
He said countries needed to deploy disease surveillance systems which can flag a pathogen even if it was detected in a remote village. “So, we need those surveillance systems and lab capacities which could diagnose what is going on — is it a new pathogen?”
Disease surveillance systems, he said, have a good return on investments because they will capture the spread of disease not only for the country, but also for the world. They will also be able to support other types of public health needs.
But that, Gilbert said, requires significant investments at global and national levels. “So, national governments will have to prioritise investing in such capacities — not only in the interest of their own country, but also the world,” he said.
He said countries should join hands to develop vaccine candidates in advance, which could be turned into real vaccines at short notice. “That requires significant commitment globally and it requires resources and collaboration of countries. Big countries could coordinate in a such a way that if India will take leadership on research in one type of vaccine candidate, the USA and others could do so on other ones.”
To address the tendency of rich countries hoarding vaccine supplies for their people, and putting at risk the citizens of poorer countries, Gilbert said the world should invest more in setting up vaccine manufacturing facilities at the regional level in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
If manufacturing facilities are in place, advanced countries can share the required technology to manufacture vaccines at short notice, he said.
