Disease X

With a foreword written by former British Prime Minister, Sir Tony Blair, DISEASE X is a must-read, fast-paced, almost-real-time account of how international scientists and global public health leaders are preparing the world to be able to contain outbreaks of new and re-emerging infectious diseases before they spawn deadly global contagions like Covid-19.

DISEASE X is the codename given by the World Health Organisation to a pathogen currently unknown to science that could cause havoc to humankind. Emerging infections are sending us multiple warnings that another Disease X is looming. We've had SARS in 2002, H5N1 bird flu in 2004, H1N1 'swine flu' in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015 and now COVID-19. These events are not freak events, but are happening continually, and at an increasing cadence.

Written by a long-standing ex-Reuters global health and science correspondent, Kate Kelland, DISEASE X uses privileged access to the body leading international efforts to control viral outbreaks, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and its CEO, Dr Richard Hatchett. CEPI seed-funded three successful COVID vaccines, including the AstraZeneca and Moderna shots. Weaving in insights from the likes of Bill Gates, Erna Solberg, Jeremy Farrar and Seth Berkley, DISEASE X explores the the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the deadly crisis it caused. It analyses the responses of global health organisations and experts, including the WHO; national governments in Britain, China and the USA; COVAX, the global vaccine allocation facility; pharmaceutical companies; and leading research scientists.

Ultimately, DISEASE X is a story of hope. It tells of how, throughout the devastation of Covid, science and human ingenuity have shown that the world can devise intricate new weapons at breath-taking pace against deadly diseases it has never encountered before. It also tells how the world's public health scientists are embarking on a 100 Days Mission to embed that scientific progress into a pandemic-busting plan to defuse future threats from as-yet-unknown pathogens in a little over three months. This is the 100 Days Mission - backed by the G7 and G20 - that will see a newly prepared world, one that can move at speed to snuff out future threats before they become deadly pandemics.

Auteur

Kate Kelland is an award-winning global health correspondent formerly at Reuters. She is now chief scientific writer at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in London. During 30 years in journalism, she set the agenda in global health and science coverage. In 2017, she won the London Foreign Press Association Science Story of the Year award for her investigative reporting on the International Agency for Research on Cancer. In 2016, she won the Medical Journalists Association's Feature of the Year award for a piece on the critical challenge facing the WHO - to heal itself. She was UK winner of the European Health Prize for Journalists in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Tony Blair is Executive Chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and leader of the Labour Party between 1994 and 2007. He led the Labour Party to three consecutive general election victories, in 1997, 2001 and 2005, becoming the longest-serving prime minister in modern times after Margaret Thatcher. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change aims to equip political leaders around the world to build prosperous, open and inclusive societies.