Infectious disease vaccines: A new approach to global health security

Until recently, border security and immigration control were seen as two of the best frontline defenses against not just terrorism, but also threats to global health security such as infectious disease. But in today’s global village, where the scale and speed of human migration is unprecedented in all directions, deadly pathogens know no boundaries. Ultimately, if we want to keep the bugs at bay, we need to stop focusing all our attention on defending borders and instead look at how we can prevent outbreaks in the first place. To understand how diseases can still pose a threat globally, consider measles, one of the most infectious diseases known to humanity – orders of magnitude more so than Ebola. It is possible to catch measles off someone just by entering the same room, even hours after they have left. Because of this, measles has become, in global health security terms, the proverbial canary in...