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Infectious Disease Early Warning System Updated, Expanded to Seven Languages By Jim Wurst UNITED NATIONS — Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and CNN founder Ted Turner joined international health officials yesterday to unveil an early warning system that will spread the word in seven languages on infectious disease outbreaks worldwide (see GSN, May 5). Developing “partnerships in every direction” in combating infectious diseases — whether caused by natural or terrorist acts — “is going to be a dynamic of our age,” Nunn said at a press conference. “Our response to a biological outbreak, whether caused by nature or caused by a deliberate act of man, depends on our public health infrastructure, not only in our individual countries, but around the globe,” Nunn said. Nunn and Turner are co-chairmen of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which is providing $500,000 of $1.3 million being used to launch the Global Public Health Intelligence Network II. The network is a joint effort between the nonproliferation group, the World Health Organization and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and updates a system developed in 1998 in Canada. The network will now monitor global news sources and health and science Web sites in seven languages — Arabic, English, French, Russian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and Spanish — for early indications of disease outbreaks, tainted food or water and incidents involving biological, chemical or radioactive materials, according to an NTI press release. The reports are automatically screened for relevance and then analyzed by Canadian health officials. The system highlights “potential threats by determining magnitude and geographic distribution and by identifying control and preventive measures,” according to a fact sheet from the Canadian government. Details on between 100 and 150 incidents will generally be submitted each day to subscribers, which include governmental public health agencies and nongovernmental organizations that work with health issues. While the original network screened and submitted information only in English, the updated version will be sent to members in any of the seven languages based on their preference, according to the NTI press release. “There is a fundamental need for a strengthened network of international cooperation and communication. GPHIN II will be essential in addressing that need,” said Canadian Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh. He said the new network would be the “primary source of information” on outbreaks for the World Health Organization. The initial Global Public Health Intelligence Network has identified early indicators of nearly 40 percent of outbreaks later verified by the World Health Organization. It helped the international health agency identify and respond to disease outbreaks in Kenya, Spain and Zanzibar, and contributed to the fight against SARA, the NTI press release states. Combating infectious disease “has always been a moral imperative, today in our age it is also a security imperative,” Nunn said. He called the network “a quantum leap forward in saving potentially millions of lives.” “The things we should have been doing around the world to protect against infectious disease … are now more on the front screens because of the security (concerns over) bioterrorism,” he said. “The things we need to do now to prevent bioterrorism, and to deal with it if it happens, are also things we should have already been doing on infectious disease.” “You have to have partnerships in every direction,” Nunn said. “Every laboratory dealing with dangerous pathogens, whether private or public, has to be involved in this. This is truly going to take a massive effort and it’s not going to stop in one or two or three years. This is going to be a dynamic of our age.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]
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