Tony Blair has written the foreword to a book entitled Disease X.
In it, he warns that “health security is national security” and that governments must “demonstrate the same level of political will, ambition and international cooperation that leaders demonstrated in the wake of World War II, when they coalesced around the objective of a sustainable peace.”
According to The Telegraph:
The impetus to tackle health security has started to “melt away”, despite the devastation wrought by the Covid pandemic, Tony Blair has warned.
In the foreword to a new book, ‘Disease X’, the former British prime minister said that while there are “concurrent crises jostling for the attention of governments”, leaders should not miss the opportunity to implement the “hard-won lessons” of the past three years.
“Covid-19 was an unprecedented global crisis and should mark a turning point in global health policy and preparedness,” Mr Blair wrote.
“Our governments need to demonstrate the same level of political will, ambition and international cooperation that leaders demonstrated in the wake of World War II, when they coalesced around the objective of a sustainable peace.
“This must be applied to the post pandemic order because, at its heart, health security is national security,” he added. “It is clear this will not be the last pandemic threat of our lifetimes … there is no excuse to be unprepared, again…”
Mr Blair’s warning kickstarts ‘Disease X: The 100 Days Mission to End Pandemics’.
The upcoming book – written by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations’s (Cepi’s) chief scientific writer, Kate Kelland – traces the organisation’s Covid-19 response and sets out its strategy to rapidly control and neutralise potentially dangerous emerging viruses.
The agency has become a significant player in pandemic preparedness since it was set up at Davos in 2017. To tackle Covid, it backed a portfolio of vaccines including Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca and Novavax, and helped establish Covax – which had mixed success distributing jabs equitably worldwide.
Now, the organisation is looking forward, led by the “professional pandemic worrier” Dr Richard Hatchett – one of the first in the West to develop the concept that the spread of pathogens should be slowed to buy time for the arrival of vaccines and treatments
The crux of Cepi’s plan is to fund and develop a library of prototype vaccines, which protect against at least 100 of more than 250 viruses known to infect people, across 25 viral families. These could then be used to develop safe and effective shots within 100 days of a new pathogen emerging.
According to ‘Disease X’, achieving this goal relies on being prepared to move fast, take risks, share data, spend money – and sometimes fail.
But Mr Blair warned that “a plan is just a good intention – until it is delivered”.
“Governments and leaders need to think about preparation not as a traditional plan-on-a-shelf that is dusted off when the threat arrives, but rather as national defence plans that are continually tested, refined and implemented across the entire system of government,” he said.
