Global warning systems have been set up, such as ProMED mail, initiated over 10 years ago, and the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
But as the recent global outbreak of SARS demonstrated, health professionals are still vulnerable to new infections.
Sadly, some radio talk-show hosts, pundits and bloggers are exploiting the global outbreak to vilify and demonize immigrants from Mexico.
He considers Édgar to be not "Patient Zero," the source of a global outbreak, but rather the first person in the world known to have survived the virus.
Barring a major global outbreak, however, Egyptian health authorities decided that pilgrims could proceed to Mecca and Medina for the hajj in late November as scheduled.
Underpinning this rapid response was the newly established Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which electronically linked 112 existing public-health networks worldwide.
Citing bird flu as well as a longer-term concern about other diseases, Bush administration officials on Wednesday released a national pandemic preparedness plan aimed at limiting American deaths if a global outbreak occurs.
Following a global outbreak of handwringing as the scale of the match fixing issues in football and cricket became clear amid a blizzard of headlines, integrity issues appear to have receded back down the priority list.
Since the advent of the Ebola virus in Africa, the agency has been experimenting with a voluntary system of information gathering through its Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, made up of 100 partners, with 11 laboratories in 10 countries.
The real problem is not how secretive China has been, but how ineffective the World Health Organization has been in creating and enforcing a public health policy suited for a global outbreak like this one.
The early 2000s were grim: terrorist attacks in America, a global outbreak of SARS and the war in Iraq all tempered people's appetites for international travel and frivolous purchases.
