Diagnosis for global health: Threats of infectious disease and why we continue to ignore them.

Abstract

In a matter of several weeks, an unknown infectious agent spread over the entire globe; it infected over 2.2 million people and killed at least 150,000 (as of April 2020). This infectious agent has been identified as a novel coronavirus and is now known as COVID-19. In 2007, Cheng et al. warned us of the reemerging ability of coronaviruses and the “ticking time bomb” that awaits. In 2008, Talbot et al. also warned that SARS was only the tip of the iceberg with regards to coronaviruses. There has been an endless amount of information available about how to prevent and minimize the risk of future outbreaks. We knew the importance of implementing these strategies 16 years ago; nonetheless, the number of people infected by COVID-19 are climbing each day. SARS was not the only infectious disease we could have learned from: a more recent example is Ebola. In 2015, Bill Gates discussed the impact of Ebola, warned that “if anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war”, and made suggestions to invest in stronger public health systems. We had the time to implement these suggestions made over the years, yet they were not taken seriously and for the current pandemic, it is too late to use preventative measures as we are managing the consequences. Hopefully, in the world post-COVID-19, these important lessons will finally be applied and our global health system will become stronger.