ABSTRACT
The ongoing COVID-19 disaster―and the universal realization of the inevitability of even worse pandemics in the future―has resulted in a wealth of books, scientific papers, and journalistic analyses of the politics, medicine, and human suffering. The Nature of Pandemics is not an outcrop of COVID-19 publication frenzy. Conceived in the period between the outbreaks of SARS and Ebola, the book addresses the critical, but commonly overlooked issues that limit readiness, recognition, and rapid response to emerging biodisasters.
The book is unique in its approach to pandemics. It offers a holistic view of the nature of pandemics as a phenomenon, and of the challenges involved in mounting an organized, concerted response to a worldwide lethal bioevent. Most healthcare professionals at national and international levels recognize the danger; the political efforts to establish consistently effective countermeasures are sporadic and dissonant when they do occur. The slow and politically safe approach, the failure to react quickly, and unhesitatingly mobilize all resources, remain the paramount obstacles to the effective containment of a pandemic.
The individual chapters of the book are written by internationally respected experts from Africa, Europe, and North and South America. The contributing authors represent a cross-section of professions involved in counter-pandemic activities: some operate at the highest levels of national and international institutions, others work as clinicians specializing in infectious diseases, scientists, experts in public health, law and its enforcement, or military aspects of pandemics. Their contributions, often highly personal and perhaps even controversial—supported by their involvement in the "front-line" challenges of pandemic containment and mitigation—provide a rare combination of first-hand knowledge of the current "state of the art" and recommendations for the implementation of best practices.
The Nature of Pandemics offers multifaceted insight into problems that, if ignored initially, come to mar all subsequent response and mitigation efforts. The content spans solutions to developing readiness and mobilizing response as much to the current pandemic as to the future ones. Addressing government-generated roadblocks to response, military and security issues, global supply chain infrastructure, communications, information technology, ethical dilemmas posed by vacillating quality of care—and the inevitable mass fatalities—together with the confused interaction of global health organizations and response agencies, the book examines the panoply of complexities not only at the center of a pandemic outbreak but also at its equally critical and deadly periphery.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
section Section I|86 pages
Emerging Infectious Diseases
chapter Chapter 1|16 pages
Politics, Economics, and Egos
chapter Chapter 2|36 pages
The Socioeconomic and Security Challenges in Responding to Medical Emergencies—Pandemics or Disasters—in Post-Conflict Society
chapter Chapter 3|21 pages
Pandemics
section Section II|28 pages
Prevention of Future Pandemics
chapter Chapter 5|26 pages
The PREDICT Project
section Section III|47 pages
Managing Pandemics/Disasters
chapter Chapter 8|25 pages
Supply Chain Infrastructure in Global Health Systems
section Section IV|73 pages
Communications
chapter Chapter 9|29 pages
Emerging Infectious Disease Communication Strategies of Health Organizations
chapter Chapter 10|16 pages
From Woe to Go
chapter Chapter 11|25 pages
An Exploration of the Lived Experience of African Journalists during the 2014 Ebola Crisis
section Section V|112 pages
Information Technology
chapter Chapter 13|32 pages
Health Information Technology and Infectious Disease
chapter Chapter 14|20 pages
The Meaning of the Italian Fight against COVID-19
chapter Chapter 15|38 pages
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to Fight Effectively against Pandemics
section Section VI|53 pages
Security, Policing, and the Law
section Section VII|25 pages
Final Thoughts The Next Pandemic