Can We Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Starts?

What if we could catch the next pandemic before it starts?

For most of human history, we’ve discovered outbreaks after people start getting sick. But what if we could spot a dangerous virus as it emerges, track it as it spreads and give health workers the information they need to stop it - in real time?

Meet Dr Pardis Sabeti, geneticist, disease hunter and professor at Harvard University. Pardis has spent more than two decades on the frontlines of some of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, from Lassa fever and Ebola in West Africa to COVID-19. Now, through Sentinel, she and her team are trying to build something even more ambitious: an early-warning system for infectious disease that can work anywhere - including communities across Africa where laboratory resources are limited and outbreaks can easily go undetected.

From why many “emerging” diseases may actually be diseases we simply haven’t detected to the devastating consequences of global health funding cuts - this is a conversation about how close we are to changing our relationship with infectious disease, and what it will take to stop the next outbreak before it becomes a pandemic.

In this episode:

How Pardis and her team tracked Ebola as it spread through West AfricaWhy many “emerging” diseases may already be circulatingHow Sentinel is building an early-warning system for outbreaksWhat Rwanda got right with MarburgWhat global health funding cuts look like on the ground and in the labWhy stopping the next pandemic will take more than technologyWhy Pardis still believes we can build a world where outbreaks are stopped before they become pandemicsTimestamps:

00:00 The Disease Hunter

00:42 If Pandemics Keep You Up at Night

02:51 Inside the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

03:38 The More You Test, the More You Find

04:39 Building an Early-Warning System for Disease

07:05 Are Diseases Emerging - or Are We Finally Detecting Them?