Human Rights

Preparedness is a key strategic element of an effective response to health threats. However, despite evident improvements in recent years, there is still large evidence of ineffective management of epidemic and pandemic events at any level, as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently showed.

Declaring an emergency is a dirty work, but someone has to do it. When facing a serious threat to global public health, even if complete evidence is lacking, someone has to take the responsibility to push the red button that activates a chain of coordinated actions (such as cooperation among states and research on vaccines). Choosing to do this, the risk of giving a false alarm is unavoidable.

Rhett Krawit is a Californian 7-year-old kid. He survived leukaemia after a fight lasted three-and-half years that left his immune system highly compromised. He wants to go to school and he has any right to do so, but he cannot do it safely. Rhett cannot be vaccinated because his immune system is still rebuilding and the presence of unvaccinated children exposes him to diseases like measles and chicken pox, which could be lethal for him. An actual risk, since in almost one fourth of Californian schools the herd immunity has been lost because of vaccine hesitancy and refusal.

Infectious diseases not only impact on people’s health conditions, but also on several socio-economic aspects. Facing epidemics and pandemics is thus a major challenge for both science and society, a challenge that requires a multidisciplinary approach. Within this context, the first ASSET Summer School will be held in Rome, on September 21-24, at the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS).