Biosurveillance Threats and the Opportunity to Develop a Safer World

Bilder Leon^*

Department of Periodontology, School of Graduate Dentistry, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel

*Corresponding Author:

Bilder Leon D.M.D., PhD
Department of Periodontology
School of Graduate Dentistry
Rambam Health Care Campus
Haifa, Israel
E-mail: leon.bilder1@gmail.com

Received Date: January 28, 2016; Accepted Date: April 06, 2016; Published Date: April 12, 2016

Citation: Leon B (2016) Biosurveillance Threats and the Opportunity to Develop a Safer World. J Bioterror Biodef 7: 143. doi: 10.4172/2157-2526.1000143

Copyright: © 2016 Leon B. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Biological events that have caused significant mass morbidity, mortality and fear are well chronicled in human history [1]. They range from the Antonine Plague (similar to smallpox), which caused a death toll of 30% of the population, to the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, which resulted in mortality estimates of as high as 70% of the population. Biological disasters have also occurred in modern times. Such disasters include: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002 and 2003; influenza in the 20th century; Ebola Viral Disease in West Africa in 2014 [1].

The term “bio surveillance” has become the umbrella term for a more comprehensive approach to bioterrorism and biological events [2]. From this point of view recent events have to be analyzed where hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge from conflict in Iraq and Syria have streamed into Europe. Are these governments ready to monitor the epidemiologic status on their borders? In this question an emphasis is put on the point of entry (the border crossing) when potential biological threats could infiltrate.

An additional source of “bio surveillance” threats is human migration. Such events could be massive immigration, religious pilgrimage, or even large scale sporting events and business/personal air travel, which could endanger regions that had not been at risk previously. The rapid spread of pandemic infections has led to the development of numerous devices to detect infected persons, especially at border checkpoints [3]. Emerging technologies from a combination of miniaturization technologies (such as “lab on a chip”) and data from numerous fields are leading to noninvasive, effective, automated, portable, low cost, more efficient and rapid biochemical analyses which must be adopted to adapt to every potential biological threat to society.

The question is not whether other pandemic bio surveillance events will return, but rather when and where they will occur.

References

1. Wagar E (2016) Bioterrorism and the Role of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Clin Microbiol Rev 29: 175-189.
2. Margevicius KJ, Generous N, Taylor-McCabe KJ, Brown M, Daniel WB, et al. (2014) Advancing a framework to enable characterization and evaluation of data streams useful for biosurveillance. PLoS One 9: e83730.
3. Bilder L, Machtei EE, Shenhar Y, Kra-Oz Z, Basis F (2011) Salivary detection of H1N1 virus: a clinical feasibility investigation. J Dent Res 90: 1136-1139.