Global Biological Threats: Novel Tools and Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Sustainable Development
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REVIEW ARTICLE
© Indian Institute of Science 2020.
Global Biological Threats: Novel Tools and Multi‑Disciplinary Approaches to Sustainable Development Shahid Jameel1,2* Abstract | The Covid-19 pandemic has raised awareness of future bio‑ logical threats, how we can prepare and develop mitigation strategies. Technology has allowed us to quickly identify the pathogen, map its evo‑ lution in real time and develop scores of vaccines within months. This review looks at disease threats from a perspective of human develop‑ ment, and the futuristic technologies that may help in the fight. Most importantly, cooperation across political and ideological boundaries would be needed in a highly inter-connected world. A new disease emerging anywhere is a threat everywhere. 1 Introduction The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Survey1 has looked at the status of health at global, national and regional levels since the 1990s to understand evolving health challenges across populations. The 2017 dataset and the Report1 highlight a slowdown in progress towards health-related Sustainable Development Goals.2 Infectious disease mortality has decreased largely due to better healthcare, drugs to combat infections and vaccines to prevent disease. However, outbreaks of infectious disease worldwide have also increased steadily for the past 40 years. An analysis of over 10,000 outbreaks showed bacteria and viruses to be the most common causes, with person-to-person and vector-borne transmission, zoonoses and human-specific illnesses on the rise (Fig. 1).2 In a landmark paper in 2008, Kate Jones and colleagues in London showed emerging infectious disease (EID) events between 1940 and 2004 to be
distributed non-randomly across the g lobe3. The EIDs were dominated by zoonotic pathogens, and have increased over time. The paper also highlighted antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to be a future threat and predicted global emerging disease ‘hotspots’, which prominently includes India, south and southeast Asia. Viruses makeup only 14 percent of known human pathogens but comprise 44% of new and emerging p athogens4. Some of the biggest public health threats of the twentieth century such as influenza and HIV came from viruses with zoonotic origins. The first two decades of the twenty-first century has already seen two pandemics, the 2009 swine flu3 and the ongoing Covid-19,4 and epidemics of SARS, MERS and Ebola that were significant threats but did not have the geographical spread to become pandemics. All of these outbreaks were caused by viruses that spilled over from wild animals into humans, 3
1
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) provides a tool to quantify health loss from hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors. It is led by The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research centre at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
2 The SDGs were adopted in 2015 as a universal call by all UN Member States to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity
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