"Metabiota is digitizing the world's microbial threats so that governments, insurance companies and corporations in multiple industries can be proactive about fighting disease spread and epidemic risk financing," RSTP's John DeLoche said of the decision to re-up financing.
A few days later, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report, Microbial Threats to Health, that highlighted many of the issues and challenges raised by SARS (2 ).
This anniversary provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the international response led by WHO to this new global microbial threat, a response that resulted in control of the pandemic that resulted in >8,000 cases and nearly 800 deaths in >30 countries and had a large economic impact (3 ).
Therein, he warns that "microbial threats will grow in coming years in their ability to plague us, kill people, destroy regional economies, and threaten humanity in ways more severe than the worst imaginable volcanoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes".
The Institute of Medicine's Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health believes that this threat will continue and may even intensify in coming years" (1).
"We are certain that there will be a continuous evolution of various natural plagues," said Dr. Frederick Sparling, a member of a National Academy of Sciences panel that recently issued a report, "Microbial Threats to Health".
This issue of EID continues in the tradition of the 2 previous December theme issues by focusing on zoonoses, reminding readers again that we must maintain a vigilance in combatting these microbial threats.
The Institute of Medicine has noted that "The importance of surveillance to the detection and control of emerging microbial threats cannot be overemphasized" [ 2].
The authors suggest that we must learn to cooperate if we are to effectively combat emerging microbial threats.
