Attachment

visioned in Chapter 2 won't be vy (and accountable to) the WHO. Ata expanded to South and Southeast Asia, but it should go even further. The field would also benefit from advances like the Oxford Nanopore sequencer and smartphone app from Chapter 3, which make it possible to do genomic sequencing in many more places. And some researchers are using viral genomes to predict when and where the next variant may emerge, work that deserves much more support. Start building the GERM team. The team I envisioned in Chapter 2 won't be stood up overnight. But by working on COVID, they will gain valuable experience so they can be ready for the next major outbreak while also helping reduce the burden of other infectious diseases, including measles and malaria. [possible mention of a foundation commitment here, with emphasis that ultimately it needs to be fully funded by rich governments] For the longer term: Create and fund the GERM team, coordinated by (and accountable to) the WHO. Improve civil registration and vital statistics in the developing world. At a minimum, developing countries need stronger registries of births and deaths, information that would feed into national disease surveillance work, like the effort in Mozambique that I described in Chapter 3. Then, building on that foundation, they could expand into genomic sequencing, autopsies that use minimally invasive tissue sampling, wastewater surveillance, and other practices. Ultimately, the goal for nearly every country is to be able to detect and respond to outbreaks within its borders--whether the disease is TB, malaria, or one we've never seen before.