Predicting Infectious Outbreaks, Preventing Pandemics

"[Predict, a U.S. pathogens surveillance initiative] was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge and then mobilizing. That's expensive."
"The United States spent $5-billion fighting Ebola in West Africa. This [Predict] costs far less."
Peter Daszak, president, EcoHealth Alliance

"[Allowing Predict to be terminated] is really unfortunate, and the opposite of what we'd like to see happening."
"Americans need to understand how much their health security depends on that of other countries, often countries that have no capacity to do this themselves."
Dr.Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian prime minister, former WHO director-general

"We generated an illustrated book on how to keep bats out of houses by putting screens on windows or mesh below the roof thatch. "That's the kind of thing Predict paid for."
"We were getting to the point of having a trained work force that could gather animal samples and labs that could test for unknown viruses, not just known ones."
"Once it stops, it's going to be hard to maintain that level of proficiency."
Dr.Jonathan Epstein, EcoHealth Alliance veterinarian

The EPT program is strengthening laboratory capacity to detect and report common infectious diseases in humans and wildlife as well as new disease threats. A. Clements/USAID

In the wake of the West African Ebola outbreak, researchers funded by the Predict program identified the bat species carrying the Ebola Zaire strain that caused the disease. Following which yet another team of researchers in Sierra Leone discovered a new strain altogether, known as Ebola Bombali. Dr. Epstein explained that the strain in Zaire was discovered in a bat habitually roosting in caves and mines, whereas the Bombali vector bat was identified as a species that tended to roost in houses.

Finding a solution that would prevent the Ebola-carrying bats to enter homes in Zaire was a huge obvious benefit to the population involved as well as to the world of medical science and disease prevention.

Focus countries for USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program.

The U.S.-funded and -led program known as Predict, operated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), had its initiation a decade ago. Its ten years of operation cost the U.S.Treasury $207-million as an investment in global health. The program is being closed down for the simple reason that it has reached the end of a funding cycle, explained Irene Koek, acting assistant administrator of the global health bureau of USAID. She added that USAID is "proud and happy over the work Predict has done".

Over one thousand new viruses, including the new Ebola strain, were discovered thanks to Predict and the work it funded. About five thousand people from thirty African and Asian countries were trained under Predict, which also established 60 research laboratories. Predict was closing as a result of "the ascension of risk-averse bureaucrats", according to Dennis Carroll, who had been appointed to oversee the project. The project's goal was to accelerate and organize the search for zoonotic diseases; the type of disease that may cross species from infected animals to infect humans.

Some of the discoveries accredited to Predict in various parts of the world identified risks and recommended preventive action. SARS was found in captive civet cats in China that transmitted the disease to humans -- while Ebola circulates among bats and apes and in South Asia Nipah virus reaches out to infect humans through contact with pigs or date palm sap infected by bats carrying the virus. MERS is also carried by bats in Saudi Arabia, to infect camels, which in turn infect humans.

Focus countries for USAID’s H5N1 Avian Influenza Investment.

One Predict team established that endangered otters in a Cambodian zoo, fed raw chickens infected with bird flu killed the otters. Bat-borne viruses were found in a cave in Thailand where a boys' soccer team might have been exposed to them, while trapped for weeks before being rescued, and it was a Predict laboratory that identified those viruses.Some health-related programs such as the President's Malaria Initiative and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief are continuing to be supported by USAID.

Predict looked for ways in which to curb culturally traditional hunting for bush-meat or the breeding of racing camels, both of which practices encouraged disease eruptions. It also sponsored computer modeling that was set up to predict where the likeliest geographic locations set to erupt in outbreaks were to be found, and recommended pre-emptive actions to avoid those outbreaks.

Surveillance for new pandemic threats in “hot spot” countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America focuses on wildlife (particularly non-human primates, bats, and rodents) as well as people with close contact with wildlife. A. Clements/USAID