He suggests creating a global “fire brigade” of 3,000 experts scattered around the world, recruited for skills ranging from epidemiology and genetics, through drug and vaccine development and computer modelling, to diplomacy. This outfit, which would probably work under the auspices of the World Health Organisation, would remain on permanent standby, ready to respond to any detected outbreak.
That’s Bill Gates in his new book on How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, according to a review in The Economist. Which should remind us all that something similar has been mooted for crop diseases. What with the International Day of Plant Health coming up, it would be good to know where we are with that idea now.
LATER: I had something to say about the International Day of Plant Health over at work.