A Call for “Smart Surveillance”: A Lesson Learned from H1N1

Excerpt

As we adjust to life within the H1N1 pandemic, we find ourselves asking the same questions posed about the global economic crisis: “How did this happen?” “Where did this begin?” and most importantly, “Why didn’t we know this would happen?” Since the emergence of H5N1 avian flu in 1997, the USA alone has spent billions of dollars on pandemic prevention: expanding global surveillance, strengthening Homeland Security, stockpiling the two most effective antivirals (Oseltamivir and Zanamivir), and improving vaccine production capacity. The world seemed to act, for once, with appropriate urgency: Funds from intergovernmental agencies were targeted to bolster surveillance in regions where evidence of human-to-human transmission (the very origins of a new pandemic) were strongest. So, we all watched eagerly as one, then another, report discussed the possibility, probability, or impossibility of the Great H5N1 Pandemic. …