Emerging Health Threats Journal Supplement 1, 2013 Co-Edited by Suwit Wibulpolprasert, Louise S. Gresham and Mark S. Smolinski A World United Against Infectious Diseases: Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance Emerging Health Threats Journal The Emerging Health Threats Journal is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing the latest and best research on emerging threats to human health. Its focus is threats from any source, including the environment, chemicals, radiation, pathogens, and society. It welcomes papers on the preparedness and response to natural or man-made disasters, including those that involve the deliberate release of chemical, biological, or radio-nuclear material. Content will be determined by novelty and scope of the threat, and by scientific excellence. TheJournal welcomes investigative studies that promote the understanding of factors involved in the emergence, prevention, and elimination of health threats. Articles on lessons learned from disaster and crisis response are particularly encouraged. The Journal seeks high-quality submissions from academic, industrial, clinical practice, public health, and government research and planning sectors of original research articles, reviews, policy reviews, lessons learned, commentaries, and perspectives on emerging threats to human health. EDITORIAL TEAM EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief: Roy Anderson, United Kingdom Andrew Robertson Mahdi Balali-Mood, Islamic Republic of Iran Western Australian Department of Health Peter George Blain, United Kingdom Australia Peter Borriello, United Kingdom David Brown, United Kingdom Phone: +61 (08)92222277 Jane Cardosa, Malaysia Email: [email protected] Andrew Dobson, United States Gerry Fitzgerald, Australia Nathaniel Hupert, United States Gerald Keusch, United States Susanna K.P. Lau, China Stanley Lemon, United States Nigel Lightfoot, United States Barry Schoub, South Africa Pat Troop, United Kingdom Alain Jacques Valleron, France Patrick Woo, Hong Kong PUBLICATION INFORMATION Emerging Health Threats Journal, eISSN 1752-8550 (online), Supplements eISSN 1752-8550 (online), 2001-1350 (print), is an Open Access journal and applies the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Under this license, copyright is retained by the author who grants to users the right to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute and copy articles for any non-commercial purpose as long as the original author(s) and source are properly cited. No permission is required from the publishers or author(s). All articles are posted online immediately they are ready for publication and will be assigned a DOI number (Digital Object Identifier) whereby they become searchable and citable without delay. Emerging Health Threats Journal full text articles are accessible via the journal’s website at http://www.eht-journal.net as well as via international search engines such as Google Scholar. Emerging Health Threats Journal is indexed/tracked/covered by the following services: Academic Search Complete (EBSCO), Current Abstracts (EBSCO), Directory of Open Access Journals, EMBASE, EMcare, Index Copernicus, JournalSeek, Open J-Gate, PubMed Central/PubMed, SafetyLit, Scopus To submit manuscripts and for information about publication fees, see http://www.eht-journal.net For information on reprints, advertisements and other commercial sales, please contact [email protected] Typeset by Datapage (India) Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printer, Southampton, UK Cover image credited to: Katherine C. Bond ® The paper used in this publication contains pulp sourced from forests independently certified MIX Board from to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) principles and criteria. Chain of custody certification responsible sources FSC® C020438 allows the pulp from these forests to be tracked to the end use (see www.fsc-uk.org). A World United Against Infectious Diseases: Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) Emerging Health Threats Journal Á Supplement 1, 2013 Co-Edited by Suwit Wibulpolprasert, Louise S. Gresham and Mark S. Smolinski Acknowledgements The editors of this Emerging Health Threats Journal supplement express their extreme gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation for hosting the original convening of authors at the Bellagio Conference Center, Italy, sparking this ambitious body of work; to the authors for their insight into surveillance and innovation around the world; to Dr. Leslie A. Pray for reviewing the manuscripts and providing expert critical analysis of the papers and for her consistent style of expert editing and patience; and to the honorable reviewers from across the world. We thank the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as Interim Executive Secretariat of Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS), for overseeing the process of creating this supplement and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, Fondation Me´rieux and Fondation Me´rieux, USA for providing resources for the production of the supplement. Finally, we thank the Prince Mahidol Award Conference 2013 for the opportunity to share the rich experiences of regional disease surveillance networks at the global forum on A World United Against Infectious Diseases for which this supplement was commissioned. æLETTER The world has made significant strides in tackling major Each of our organizations comes to this issue with public health challenges over the last several decades. We equal commitment but different perspectives Á ranging have eradicated one disease, smallpox, and are close to from global health to disaster management to biosecurity doing so with polio and guinea worm. We continue to and more. We are all united in our dedication to this make significant progress on other debilitating illnesses, effort, which fills a critical gap in global public health including malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Yet, even capacity. We look forward to CORDS contributing to as our technology and practices improve, new threats improve health outcomes worldwide. arise. In the last two decades, we have seen some 30 new zoonotic diseases emerge, from SARS to hantavirus to Sincerely, Ebola and more. Population pressures and economic growth push humans into ever closer contact with animals, disturbing ecosystems, and creating ripe condi- tions for new pathogens to jump from animals to humans. Add to this the incredible growth in global travel and trade and the risk of new diseases quickly spreading worldwide has never been greater. So while our ability to respond continually improves, the challenges we Judith Rodin face increase as well. President Many factors make up the successful fight against The Rockefeller Foundation emerging infectious diseases. But one factor trumps all* early detection and rapid identification of novel infec- tions. If we can find a new pathogen early, we can often isolate it to the area in which it emerges. Conversely, failure to find the disease early allows the pathogen to Sam Nunn propagate to new regions, countries and continents, Co-Chairman and CEO making the response much more difficult and costly. Nuclear Threat Initiative Imagine if we had found HIV/AIDS when it was still contained to its region of origin*many of today’s 35 million people infected worldwide would have never been exposed. Our tools of detection, including point-of-care diagnostics and digital surveillance, continue to improve. However, the global infectious disease surveillance sys- tem is disjointed. Practices and protocols vary, and inefficiencies abound. The initiative we are jointly supporting*Connecting Organizations for Regional Dis- ease Surveillance (CORDS)*tackles this challenge by building trust and collaboration across national borders. Benoit Miribel CORDS unites regional disease surveillance networks Director General from critical hotspots around the world to promote Fondation Me´rieux exchanges of best practices in surveillance and catalyze innovation in early disease detection. By working to- gether with international bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), World Organization for Larry Brilliant Animal Health (IOE), and the Food and Agriculture President and CEO Organization of the United Nations (FAO), CORDS will Skoll Global Threats Fund speed the development, capabilities and sustainability of all its network members to improve global surveillance and mitigate the potential impact of disease outbreaks both from epidemic diseases and from the recrudescence of endemic diseases. æLETTER The revised International Health Regulations 2005 movement of pathogens is not unidirectional: there is (IHR), which entered into force in May, 2007, imposed spillover and spill-back between these highly interdepen- a duty on every country to develop the capacity to detect dent domains, additionally modulated intensification of and respond to public health events of potential interna- livestock production system, trade, climate change and tional concern. Member countries of the OIE have a the increasing human population. The international responsibility to comply with the OIE international movement of pathogens, animals, people and goods has standards to prevent the movement of animal pathogens fuelled the emergence and international spread of disease and diseases (including zoonoses) between countries, and throughout history, and lies at the heart of the IHR and the related OIE Performance of Veterinary Services the OIE international standards. Communication and Pathway