To understand how, when and where animal influenza viruses may evolve into pandemic agents, monitoring the occurrence, evolution and spread of these viruses is needed as well as a better understanding of the factors that drive these aspects.
Moreover, the need for early disease detection systems in these settings is increasing as the potential for pandemics persists and studies have shown that military populations played an important role in the origin and explosive expansion of pandemic agents in the past – in the US, the influenza pandemic of 1918 19 began among military trainees [ 23, 24].
No other foreseeable disease agent - pandemic influenza, HIV, biological terrorism - is likely to so sizably damage human health worldwide.
But preventing the emergence of a new pandemic with antiviral agents requires stockpiling large quantities and planning for targeted prophylaxis.
These covered therapeutic and biological interventions including antipsychotics, antidepressants, antivirals, natural antiarthritics, anti-inflammatory agents, pandemic influenza vaccines, statins, erythropoietins and antiplatelet compounds.
On the contrary, candidates for the next pandemic would be agents that are transmitted efficiently and cause acute disease such as severe acute respiratory syndrome and flu.
Neuraminidase inhibitors do have a potentially favourable influence on the course of the disease in an individual patient, but are especially valuable, on a population level, in averting or delaying an influenza pandemic, provided antiviral agents are prescribed swiftly and for the correct indication.
The etiological agent of pandemic cholera was the bacterium Vibrio cholerae serotype O1, which was later divided into two biotypes: classical biotype and El Tor biotype.
Longini, I. M., Halloran, M. E., Nizam, A. & Yang, Y. Containing Pandemic Influenza with Antiviral Agents.
