Seth Berkley
Quotes by Seth Berkley
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As more and more people adopt an urban lifestyle and cities continue to swell, not only does the risk of urban epidemics increase - something we haven't seen much of for decades - but the need for larger emergency stockpiles can increase, too.
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As demonstrated by the emergence of the Mexican swine flu in the U.S., infectious diseases have little respect for borders; helping developing countries detect and deal with their diseases is the surest way for us to protect ourselves from new and potentially devastating epidemics.
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When AIDS first appeared, people didn't know what it was. You'll remember that it affected mostly young gay men - it was actually called GRID for a short period of time: Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome - and people thought it actually might be recreational drugs or other types of toxins.
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Now, you might think of flu as just a really bad cold, but it can be a death sentence. Every year, 36,000 people in the United States die of seasonal flu. In the developing world, the data is much sketchier, but the death toll is almost certainly higher.
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The GAVI Alliance has achieved many things in its first dozen years, but none more important than helping save more than 5.5 million lives and prevent untold illness and suffering.
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Yellow fever outbreaks are not uncommon. But, as with other infectious diseases, when they occur in urban areas, they can play out very differently - not least in terms of the speed and scale at which they can spread.
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As cities get bigger, our best defence will be to prevent outbreaks in the first place by building better public health systems, improving childhood immunisation through better routine immunisation and pre-emptive vaccination campaigns.
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GAVI works collaboratively with the private sector - from investment banks to vaccine suppliers to corporations to members of the Forbes 400 - to find new and better ways to raise and apply resources and broaden the base of participants in global health.
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In global health, emergency vaccine stockpiles are like the insurance policy you never really wanted to take out: you resent the cost and have mixed feelings about never making a claim. Moreover, given that a stockpile is often a last resort, if you ever fall back on it, you have, in some way, already failed.
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Measles is probably the best argument for why there needs to be global health, and why we have to think about it as a global public good. Because in a sense, measles is the canary in the coal mine for immunization. It is, you know, highly transmissible. The vaccine costs 15 cents, so it's not - you know, shouldn't be an issue in terms of cost.
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The return on investment in global health is tremendous, and the biggest bang for the buck comes from vaccines. Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective health investments in history.
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New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically improve people's health. And this goes beyond the traditional burden of childhood infectious diseases.
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If you want to know the value of vaccines, just spend some time in a clinic in Africa. The faces of the mothers and fathers say it all: vaccines prevent illness and save lives.
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With infectious disease, without vaccines, there's no safety in numbers.
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Now, when you get a viral infection, what normally happens is it takes days or weeks for your body to fight back at full strength, and that might be too late. When you're pre-immunized, what happens is you have forces in your body pre-trained to recognize and defeat specific foes. So that's really how vaccines work.
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The virus that causes AIDS is the trickiest pathogen scientists have ever confronted. It mutates furiously, it has decoys to evade the immune system, it attacks the very cells that are trying to fight it, and it quickly hides itself in your genome.
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For just a few dollars a dose, vaccines save lives and help reduce poverty. Unlike medical treatment, they provide a lifetime of protection from deadly and debilitating disease. They are safe and effective. They cut healthcare and treatment costs, reduce the number of hospital visits, and ensure healthier children, families and communities.
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