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This book provides an engaging, jargon-free introduction to the threat of global pandemics, offering an overview of the many origins and triggers of pandemic events. It covers the impacts generated by novel infectious disease outbreaks across various dimensions – from social and ethical to medical and political, from media to economic and legal implications. The author discusses the preparedness strategies developed globally, the lessons learned from various outbreaks and the mitigation measures deployed — from quarantine and social distancing to data sharing and surveillance systems — including their unintended impacts. While the risk of global pandemics is certainly intensely debated by the scientific community, and increasingly by policy makers at various levels, the threat is hardly discussed in the public domain. It only permeates the media during crisis events, such as during the SARS outbreak in 2003, the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014–15, and most notably the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic crisis. This book is thus highly timely and topical. It has a global scope, whilst at times zooming in on the implications of pandemic risk and mitigation for the Global North or the Global South. Given the interdisciplinarity of the topic, this book will be of great interest to a wider non-academic audience, as well as students from a range of subjects including politics, sociology, geography, anthropology, and international development, along with entry-level medical students keen to widen their appreciation of the social dimensions of the medical work they set out to conduct.

To mitigate the spread of the rare and deadly disease Ebola, Ebola Virus Disease (EVD): Outbreaks, Control and Prevention Strategies begins with the proposition of a mathematical model with vital dynamics and two preventive measures: quarantine and isolation. Humanitarian issues in Ebola prevention and control are explored, as well as the cultural practices and social norms during outbreaks. Additionally, some innovative approaches in the humanitarian response to prevention and control are discussed. The authors expose the dilemma Ebola poses to within the healthcare system, where healthcare providers are caught between the over-arching quest for self-preservation from a highly virulent disease and the professional demand of prioritising the interests of the patients over self. In conclusion, the authors describe successfully developed drug candidates from their laboratory for the treatment Ebola using EBOV protein structure, such as VP24, VP35, VP40, nucleoprotein, and glycoprotein.

A global health catastrophe narrowly averted. A world unprepared for another outbreak. In December 2013, a young boy in a tiny West African village contracted the deadly Ebola virus. The virus spread to his relatives, then to neighboring communities, then across international borders. The world's first urban Ebola outbreak quickly overwhelmed the global health system and threatened to kill millions.As we are currently seeing, in an increasingly interconnected world in which everyone is one or two flights away from New York or London or Beijing, a localized epidemic has become a pandemic. Ebola's spread through West Africa to Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States sounded global alarms that the next killer outbreak is right around the corner—and that the world is woefully unprepared to combat a new deadly disease.From the poorest villages of rural West Africa to the Oval Office itself, this book tells the story of a deadly virus that spun wildly out of control—and reveals the truth about how close the world came to a catastrophic global pandemic. It is a story that serves as a cautionary tale for the COVID-19 epidemic currently spreading throughout the world.