Full Description
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.
Contents
1: Politics, Economics, and Egos: When Agendas Conflict—A West African Case Study 2: The Socioeconomic and Security Challenges in Responding to Medical Emergencies—Pandemics or Disasters - in Post-Conflict Society: The Liberian Ebola and COVID-19 Pandemic Experiences 3: Pandemics: Nature of an Emerging Global Threat—Preparedness in the African Context 4: Predicting Mosquito-Borne Epidemics in Latin America 5: The PREDICT Project: A Transdisciplinary Case Study in Partnerships for Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness 6: An Administrator's Nightmare 7: The Cascading Impact of Infectious Diseases on the Healthcare System 8: Supply Chain Infrastructure in Global Health Systems: A Strategic Asset for Pandemic Preparedness 9: Emerging Infectious Disease Communication Strategies of Health Organizations: An Internal and External View 10: From Woe to Go—Understanding Rumors and their Role in Preparedness and Readiness for Pandemics 11: An Exploration of the Lived Experience of African Journalists during the 2014 Ebola Crisis 12: Coordination of Global Efforts in Combatting Infectious Disease 13: Health Information Technology and Infectious Disease: Learning from the Past 14: The Meaning of the Italian Fight against COVID-19: Protecting Fragile People and Defending the Social Values of Universal Public Health and Voluntary Activities through National Digital Solutions 15: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to Fight Effectively against Pandemics 16: Biosecurity and the Police 17: The Impact of Pandemics on National and International Security 18: Quarantine: A Brief History of Infectious Pandemic Diseases in Canada
