Bill Gates warned of the global unpreparedness to deal with an epidemic five years ago

CEBU CITY, Philippines—Five years ago, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned that the world was not ready for the next epidemic, according to an article posted on the World Economic Forum (WEF) website.

Gates said this during the 2015 Vancouver TED conference, which was held towards the end of the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, noted the WEF article. 

Globally, the Ebola outbreak infected more than 28,000 people and killed over 11,000.

“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war – not missiles, but microbes,” Bill Gates was quoted as having stressed during a TED Talk five years ago.

“Part of the reason is we have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents, but we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic,” Gates explained. “We’re not ready for the next epidemic.”

During the 2015 TED Talk, Gates pointed out that the problem was there was no system at all to address an epidemic.

Gates attributed the containment of Ebola partly to the ‘heroic work by the health workers.’ “They found the people and they prevented more infections,” he added.

The WEF article quoted Gates as saying that “next time, we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they’re infectious that they get on a plane, or they go to a market.”

He added that a large epidemic would require hundreds of thousands of workers and good response system, including the use of technology.

Gates then cited the need for an overall global health system – and epidemic preparedness  that should look like war preparedness, with full-time workers and reserves ready to deploy rapidly, and to see how well people are prepared.

To deal with the next epidemic, Gates suggested the following:

•  Strong health systems in poor countries;
•  Medical reserve corps, with lots of people with training and expertise ready to deploy;
•  Pairing the medical and military experts, so the military can provide logistics and secure areas;
•  Simulations, or “germ games” to see how well leaders are prepared; and,
•  Lots of advanced R&D in areas of vaccines and diagnostics.

“If there’s one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it’s that it can serve as an early warning – a wake-up call to get ready,” Gates concluded during the 2015 TED Talk.

Meanwhile, during a recent Reddit interview which Gates posted on his blog GatesNotes on March 19, 2020, he expressed concern over the impact of the pandemic on developing countries.

“With the right actions, including the testing and social distancing (which I call “shut down”), within 2-3 months the rich countries should have avoided high levels of infection. I worry about all the economic damage but even worse will be how this will affect the developing countries that cannot do the social distancing the same way as rich countries and whose hospital capacity is much lower,” he said.

During the Reddit interview, Gates also recalled the suggestions he made on how to prepare for an epidemic. 

“We need to have the ability to scale up diagnostics, drugs and vaccines very rapidly. The technologies exist to do this well if the right investments are made. Countries can work together on this. We did create CEPI – Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation- which did some work on vaccines but that needs to be funded at higher level to have the standby manufacturing capacity for the world,” Gates said.

He cited the need for governments and others to invest heavily on being ready for the next epidemic.

”This will take global cooperation particularly to help the developing countries who will be hurt the most. A good example is the need to test therapeutics wherever the disease is to help the whole world. The Virus doesn’t respect national boundaries.” Gates said. /bmjo

TAGS: COVID-19, Epidemic