"The ongoing COVID-19 disater - and the universal realization of the unceasing threat of even worse pandemics in the future - has resulted in a wealth of books, scientific papers, and journalistic analyses on the politics, medicine, and human tragedy of recent events. The Nature of Pandemics is not an outcrop of COVID-19 publication frenzy. It was conceived in the period between the SARS and Ebola pandemics, intended to address the critical, but commonly overlooked issues, that limit our readiness, immediate recognition, and rapid response to pandemic outbreaks. The book is the first to look holistically at the nature of pandemics as a phenomenon, and the challenges of mounting an organized, concerted global response to a worldwide lethal bioevent. While the majority of healthcare professionals at national and international levels recognize the danger, the establishment of consistent and effective countermeasures in the form of a global anti-pandemic network is, at best, still sporadic and inconsistent. The need to react quickly, and unhesitatingly mobilize all needed resources-rather than embark on a slow, deliberative and politically safe approach-is probably the paramount obstacle to the effective containment of a pandemic disease. Chapters are written by internationally known and widely respected experts from the US, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South America. They represent a cross-section of professions, many with academic and medical prominence supported by their direct involvement at the very forefront of the war against pandemic outbreaks, several knowing the personal and operational challenges involved with counter-pandemic responses. All involved are active in their respective fields and offer practical, real-world expertise based on hands-on work at the "front lines," providing profound, first-hand knowledge and recommendations for best practices. The opinions, often highly personal and perhaps even controversial, are based as much on theoretical considerations as on their extensive personal and highly insightful experience. As such, The Nature of Pandemics offer a multifaceted insight into problems that, if ignored initially, come to mar all subsequent response and mitigation efforts. The approach is rigorously intellectual and, in a field that often evokes passions, is equally rigorously dispassionate. It has to be so: in the modern world of pandemics "past is the prologue." Coverage provides solutions in developing readiness and mobilizing response to the current pandemic, and future ones. Addressing, military and security issues, government roadblocks to response, mutual aid agreements, ethics, global health organizations and response agencies-and the harsh realities of potential mass fatalities-the book examines the myriad complexities of pandemics and the real threat outbreaks"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Source of description
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
Contents
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Editors
Contributors
Section I Emerging Infectious Diseases
Chapter 1 Politics, Economics, and Egos: When Agendas Conflict-A West African Case Study
Chapter 2 The Socioeconomic and Security Challenges in Responding to Medical Emergencies-Pandemics or Disasters-in Post-Conflict Society: The Liberian Ebola and COVID-19 Pandemic Experiences
Chapter 3 Pandemics: Nature of an Emerging Global Threat: Preparedness in the African Context
Chapter 4 Predicting Mosquito-Borne Epidemics in Latin America
Section II Prevention of Future Pandemics
Chapter 5 The Predict Project: A Transdisciplinary Case Study in Partnerships for Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness
Section III Managing Pandemics/Disasters
Chapter 6 An Administrator's Nightmare
Chapter 7 The Cascading Impactof Infectious Diseases onthe Healthcare System
Chapter 8 Supply Chain Infrastructure in Global Health Systems: A Strategic Asset for Pandemic Preparedness
Section IV Communications
Chapter 9 Emerging Infectious Disease Communication Strategies of Health Organizations: An Internal and External View
Chapter 10 From Woe to Go: Understanding Rumours and their Role in Preparedness andReadiness for Pandemics
Chapter 11 An Exploration of the Lived Experience of African Journalists during the 2014 Ebola Crisis
Section V Information Technology
Chapter 12 Coordination of Global Efforts in Combatting Infectious Disease
Chapter 13 Health Information Technology and Infectious Disease: Learning from the Past
Chapter 14 The Meaning of the Italian Fight against COVID-19: Protecting Fragile People and Defending the Social Values of Universal Public Health and Voluntary Activities through National Digital Solutions.
Chapter 15 Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to Fight Effectively against Pandemics
Section VI Security, Policing, and the Law
Chapter 16 Biosecurity and the Police
Chapter 17 The Impact of Pandemicson National and International Security
Chapter 18 Quarantine: A Brief History of Infectious Pandemic Diseases in Canada
Section VII Final Thoughts The Next Pandemic
Chapter 19 Collaborative Decision Making in Crises: The Malphas Affair
Appendix
Index.
ISBN
1-351-69126-0
LCCN
2022013148
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