A shot of transparency
Governments have been reluctant to share information about possible pandemics of disease. Happily, that is changing
“FOR the sake of basic human interests, the Indonesian government declares that genomic data on bird-flu viruses can be accessed by anyone.” With those words, spoken on August 3rd, Siti Fadilah Supari started a revolution that could yet save the world from the ravages of a pandemic disease. That is because Indonesia's health minister has chosen a weapon that may prove more useful than today's best vaccines in tackling such emerging threats as avian flu: transparency.
At the moment, the world's pandemic-alert system is distressingly secretive. Some countries, such as Vietnam, have been fairly open about new outbreaks of the sorts of infectious disease that might lead to pandemics, and have even invited foreigners in to help diagnose the problem. Most, however, have not been so forthright. Public-health experts point to China and Thailand, both of which suffered outbreaks of potential pandemic illnesses in the past few years (SARS in China and avian influenza in Thailand) as examples of places that do not fully disclose the relevant details.
Until now, Indonesia has followed their lead, only to sink ever deeper into the mire. Nearly four dozen people have died of avian flu in the country, over a quarter of the global total since the outbreak of the disease three years ago. Outside experts worried that the virus might be mutating in new and troublesome ways, but found their access to vital genetic data blocked. Indonesian researchers working on the virus did share data with the regional collaboration centres of the World Health Organisation (WHO), but that, until Ms Siti's announcement, was on condition no one else could analyse those data.
What's mine's my own
The reasons for countries' reluctance to share information are understandable, though hardly defensible. Some believe that full disclosure could cause locals to panic and foreign tourists to stay away. Juan Lubroth, who runs the emergency prevention system for infectious animal diseases at the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), observes that fear of losing exports is another factor. When Thailand's troubles with bird flu became known, the resulting collapse in poultry exports cost it well over $1 billion.
The least defensible motive is vanity. Individual researchers, academic institutes and even national governments want the glory and research funding that come with solving the puzzle of a new pandemic and being first to publish. In this, developing countries are not alone. America's Centres for Disease Control (CDC) also restricts access to some of the genetic data that it has analysed from various parts of the world.
This puts international organisations like the FAO and the WHO in a difficult position. On one hand, they are supposed to be vigilant about emerging threats that could affect public health, which argues for faster and fuller release of data. On the other, their statutes require them to answer to member governments, many of which are not keen on transparency. That may explain the conflicting attitudes found among staff at UN organisations.
Paul Gully, a senior adviser on communicable diseases at the WHO, for example, defends the existing system in which countries share data within the WHO but not with outsiders. Too radical a move toward openness, he believes, “might stop countries from sharing data altogether and so hurt the fight”. But Dr Lubroth, looking from the FAO's point of view, insists that “any benefits of hiding data are short-lived. To be able to divulge without politics interfering would help matters greatly, as we now see only the tip of the iceberg.”
In practice, the world seems to be moving his way. The Global Pandemic Initiative, formed in May, is a collaboration between the WHO and the CDC, together with IBM, a large computer firm, and over a dozen other groups. It is intended to develop “the use of advanced analytical and computer technology as part of a global preparedness programme for responding to potential infectious disease outbreaks.” One approach IBM hopes to take is to develop software that will help predict how diseases might spread.
Another new group wants to turn the entire process of identifying outbreaks on its head. Larry Brilliant, a former WHO official who helped to eradicate smallpox in India, dreams of an open-source, non-governmental, public-access network that would help the world move quickly whenever potential pandemics start brewing. He looks for inspiration to the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), an obscure programme run by the Canadian government that searches public databases in seven languages looking for early signs of disease outbreak.
Dr Brilliant, who is now the head of Google's philanthropy arm, made his wish known at the Technology Entertainment Design conference, an annual gathering in California of leading entrepreneurs and thinkers from the information-technology and entertainment industries. His speech so galvanised the gathered titans that he now has the backing of Sun Microsystems, Google and several big Silicon Valley venture-capital funds and investors. They are helping to develop a new “web crawler” that will expand GPHIN to track newspapers and internet blogs in 40 to 100 languages.
A reasonable objection to such a system is that it is based on press reports, not verified scientific data. Even so, its supporters argue that it could prove valuable. Press reports have the virtue of immediacy, and its results will always be subject to verification by the WHO and government authorities, of course. But its very existence might persuade them to act more promptly. After all, that is what GPHIN did a few years ago during the SARS outbreak, when it sounded the alarm and forced the authorities to respond. The direct result, in Dr Brilliant's words: “SARS is the pandemic that did not occur.”
His proposed open network could well spot the next, as yet undiscovered, threat. And systems like the one that the Global Pandemic Initiative is working on could use that information to help researchers develop vaccines rapidly in response. “The threat of a pandemic is a definitively global phenomenon,” argues Samuel Palmisano, IBM's chairman. “Our response must be similarly global, and must rely...on open, collaborative innovation.”