Infectious disease outbreaks require coordinated, high-tech responses

As the world grows smaller, warmer and wetter, governments need to have an organizational blueprint about how to best respond to infectious disease outbreaks, according to researchers. Writing in the journal Science, biostatistician M. Elizabeth Halloran, M.D, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, and University of Florida biostatistician Ira Longini, outline how policymakers and healthcare workers can use epidemiological methods, statistics, mathematics, and models of how well vaccination campaigns work to respond to new, unexpected outbreaks. Although the paper was written before the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the article addresses that kind of situation. Infectious diseases such as Ebola, for which there is not yet a vaccine or effective treatment, will be a challenge, Longini said. The authors suggest creating mobile stockpiles of vaccines for diseases that have them, such as cholera. Statistical models based on other outbreaks—such as the 2010 outbreak of cholera in...