Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
Health | Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:29am EDT Related: SCIENCE, HEALTH
MERS, Ebola, bird flu: Science's big missed opportunities
LONDON, | BY KATE KELLAND
...
Scientists are largely in the dark about how to stop or treat the slew of never-seen-before global health problems of recent years, from the emergence of the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, to a new killer strain of bird flu in China and an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
They have been unable even to pin down where they came from.
That is because vital studies to analyze transmission routes and test experimental drugs or vaccines have simply not been done during epidemics, disease experts say.
...
"Research in all of the epidemics we have faced over the past decade has been woeful," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health foundation and an expert on infectious diseases. "The world is at risk because there are huge gaps in our knowledge base.
...
There is little doubt that launching clinical trials in an outbreak is fraught with difficulty, partly because a new or rare strain of disease can infect so many and overwhelm health services and partly because there are many bureaucratic hurdles.
...
Yet Lang and others say there is nothing to say the sorts of clinical trials needed in an epidemic cannot largely be drawn up, agreed, signed and sealed ahead of time.
"We need to have protocols ready to go, we need to have a task force of research staff in each region on standby to be deployed into the next outbreak trials," she said.
...
"The main issue is that this needs to be done in days rather than weeks or months," she said. "That basically means research has to be embedded in the immediate response to an outbreak, and not come as an afterthought."
(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Timothy Heritage)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/26/us-health-epidemic-research-insight-idUSKCN0SK0P020151026
MERS, Ebola, bird flu: Science's big missed opportunities
LONDON, | BY KATE KELLAND
...
Scientists are largely in the dark about how to stop or treat the slew of never-seen-before global health problems of recent years, from the emergence of the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, to a new killer strain of bird flu in China and an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
They have been unable even to pin down where they came from.
That is because vital studies to analyze transmission routes and test experimental drugs or vaccines have simply not been done during epidemics, disease experts say.
...
"Research in all of the epidemics we have faced over the past decade has been woeful," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health foundation and an expert on infectious diseases. "The world is at risk because there are huge gaps in our knowledge base.
...
There is little doubt that launching clinical trials in an outbreak is fraught with difficulty, partly because a new or rare strain of disease can infect so many and overwhelm health services and partly because there are many bureaucratic hurdles.
...
Yet Lang and others say there is nothing to say the sorts of clinical trials needed in an epidemic cannot largely be drawn up, agreed, signed and sealed ahead of time.
"We need to have protocols ready to go, we need to have a task force of research staff in each region on standby to be deployed into the next outbreak trials," she said.
...
"The main issue is that this needs to be done in days rather than weeks or months," she said. "That basically means research has to be embedded in the immediate response to an outbreak, and not come as an afterthought."
(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Timothy Heritage)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/26/us-health-epidemic-research-insight-idUSKCN0SK0P020151026