Funding Pandemic Relief

            Epidemics and pandemics are two calamities that are almost completely out of the hands of the people. There are very few things that can take place to prevent diseases from spreading, especially in our current generation with the ability to get to one end of the world from the other in less than a day. They are natural disasters, such as earthquakes, that not much preventive actions can occur. There are steps than can be taken to limit the damage done by epidemics and pandemics, but never to completely eradicate the chance of one to occur. With the being said, though we cannot prevent diseases from becoming a pandemic, there are ways we can reduce the damage once an outbreak is considered a pandemic.

            As we watched in class, Bill Gates offered ideas for how to approach pandemics when they occur, noting that the approach needs to contain preparedness. Similar to how FEMA provides relief to victims of natural disasters such as hurricanes, we need to have people trained to work in countries where a pandemic occurs, often times of which strike in developing countries that do not have the resources to reduce the risk of a pandemic nor the resources to deal with a pandemic once it transpires. Though it is not exactly a preemptive measure taken, being well prepared for a pandemic is extremely important to limiting the amount of people affected by a disease. There are already organizations such as Doctors without Borders and the World Health Organization who do offer assistances to countries stricken by a pandemic, they lack the funding and the numbers to deal with a large pandemic, one such as Ebola.

Though Gates does not say who should fund the private organizations, he insinuates that it should be private individuals such like himself (of which he already donates to several relief programs). Though I do think that wealthy individuals should help fund private organizations, I believe the government should help fund federal organizations as well. Ideally, the organizations should fall under the military sector, as the military deals with both domestic and foreign relief, and also has the largest budget, of which some could be allocated to an epidemic fund. Medics in the military can be trained to be sent to countries facing a pandemic.

 Although it may seem to some that it is waste to allot money to something we cannot predict, the reason why having government funding for such a thing is necessary is because when a pandemic does occur, more money needs to be distributed at once (often money we do not have) as opposed to the money being distributed incrementally. The uncertainty aspect is why we need to be prepared for pandemics, but currently we are unprepared for another large pandemic.