From AIDS to Zika, an alphabet soup of emerging infectious disease outbreaks needs to be everyone’s business, all the time, everywhere.
Cases in point: Cholera’s current surge across Africa where we live and work is defying expectations and predictions. Meanwhile, in northeast United States where our colleagues work on global health security, COVID-19 hospital admissions are climbing while the West Nile virus is now a threat — again, surprisingly so.
Border health — a key strategy under the umbrella of global health security — has become an increasingly urgent priority for those of us who know all too well what most people didn’t begin to grasp until the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged health systems and economies: Pathogens that infect humans with a host of diarrheal and respiratory illnesses, as well as hemorrhagic fevers — remember Ebola? — respect no borders.