- Are epidemics more uncontrollable in a XXIth of hypermobility and flights between continents?
- If this theory is not devoid of foundations, it nevertheless forgets that communication and aid between countries have developed even more.
- "20 Minutes" questioned two health experts, for whom the risks of epidemics have on the contrary never been as manageable as today.
All the disaster films staging epidemics play on this scriptwriting spring: how to manage a pandemic when man has never moved as much as today and the virus can pass from Europe to America in a single plane flight of a few hours?
With our contemporary supermobility, epidemics would therefore spread much more uncontrollably than in the past. Not so stupid reasoning, confirms Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva. His team has even developed mathematical modeling to show the role of air transport in the spread of infectious agents. And spoiler alert : the virus tested spreads very quickly.
Much better global communication
A North American institute published a computer simulation of a virus close to that of the Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people around the world at the start of the 20th century, a few months ago. , according to estimates by the Institut Pasteur. The striking and somewhat disturbing result can be seen here.
But no need to see the glass half empty. It is not only our means of transport that have developed, there is also and above all our communications and our organization. And that changes everything. You don't even have to go back centuries to see the progress. The situation has improved significantly since the case of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome linked to the coronavirus) in 2003 in China, an epidemic which had killed more than 8,000. “We learn a few lessons from past failures. SARS had been hidden for many weeks by China from the international community. The World Health Organization (WHO) is also much more reactive, ”notes Antoine Flahault.
Exchanges and coordination
“The International Health Regulations were created to submit data on suspected episode cases like the one in Wuhan to international experts, and whether or not to declare a public health emergency. Today, everything is very closely watched, ”reassures Michèle Legeas, teacher at the EHESP and specialist in the analysis and management of health risk situations. In fact, 194 countries have signed these International Health Regulations, offering global health coverage.
Proof of WHO's effectiveness and what it can manage cooperatively. The organization dates from 1948 and shows itself, decades later, always more “decisive in the coordination of operations and the centralization of progressive and profuse information disseminated in real time”, affirms the director of the institute. Even if he reminds us that we should not overestimate its capacities either: the institution has a lower budget than that of a large university hospital in Europe or the United States.
International aid
No matter what the finances, this global cooperation makes it possible in particular to help the poorest countries to stem local epidemics before they spread. The Ebola cases, contained at national borders and quickly mastered, are good examples for Michèle Legeas.
Even the more economically massive countries benefit from this aid. "As powerful and equipped as it is, no state can stop such an epidemic emergence on its own," says Antoine Flahault in the case of the coronavirus. A lesson in modesty that is clearly visible in view of the global resources put in place recently: "China needs international scientific collaboration and the mobilization of energies and skills to control the phenomenon before it becomes more serious. wide. She was well aware of this by notifying the WHO, it seems without delay. "
The end of the great pandemics?
Beyond alliances and international aid, it is also the speed of execution that has taken a leap forward. "Today, a phenomenon like the Spanish flu, which started slowly before taking on a global scale, seems impossible to me," says Michèle Legeas. In any case, even the epidemic of SARS, which had been masked, was finally fairly well controlled and kept within a small perimeter. Today, from the first four - five cases, the world authorities are warned and can take action. "
We also better manage individuals already affected, drastically limiting, beyond the number of affected cases, the number of serious cases. "The care has improved significantly and the priority is as much not to spread the virus more than to minimize its effects for people already affected," notes the teacher.
So much so that for her, a serious pandemic on a global scale would now be almost impossible. "If we are talking about a natural virus, I find it very difficult to see how global cooperation could not manage it. Especially since for viruses, we manage to develop vaccines quite quickly. There may be epidemics still causing many sick people, but the era with epidemics causing many serious patients seems to me to be over. The Spanish flu and others therefore belong now only to history books. And disaster films have never seemed so unrealistic. So much the better.
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