Despite the federal government’s recent stance on pandemic planning, author Kevin Hazzard reminds us of the importance of public health work in this area.
This is part of a short series discussing the mission to transport American patients with Ebola from Africa to the US to receive treatment.
According to a recent article published in Nature, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staff were instructed to remove the terms biodefense and pandemic preparedness from their website, which demonstrates a lack of emphasis on future pandemic planning. This change reduces a significant focus on emerging threats, risking future pandemic readiness.
Despite the de-emphasis of biopreparedness, the potential risk of a high-consequence infectious disease breaking out remains a constant. Not being prepared for situations such as this is unacceptable to Kevin Hazzard, who detailed a mission that brought 2 Americans in West Africa with Ebola back to the US in his book,
“From a public health standpoint, preparedness is the most important thing that we could possibly do, as we saw with COVID-19,” Hazzard said. “You can stick your head in the sand and you can cut funding for public health and for epidemiology and disease research and fighting diseases around the world, but they will come to your shores. We live in a globalized world. Every country on earth has an airport, and at those airports are planes, and those planes are going to other countries, and all those countries eventually land in the United States. So what happens anywhere will happen here, so we need to be involved.”
This is the final installment of the series. Check out other episodes from it:
Episode 1: Perilous Journey: Flying Patients With Ebola From Africa to the US
Episode 2: Ebola Biocontainment at 30,000 Feet
Episode 3: Addressing Logistics, Flight Challenges
Although the federal government has taken a concerning stance, Hazzard remains positive because of the work of individuals such as the health care professionals and pilots of Phoenix Air who participated in the Ebola mission.
“This is such a wonderful example of people coming together for a common cause—a dangerous cause but a worthy one—and pulling it off through a mix of bravery and experience and just a willingness to do what many people did not think could be done,” Hazzard said.
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