Infectious diseases
Infectious diseases have a huge impact on global health, wealth, and wellbeing.
In the recent coronavirus pandemic, an estimated 6.8M people died from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and the excess mortality rate believed to be much higher. The pandemic triggered the largest global economic crisis in living history, and full recovery will take decades. We recognise the urgent need to improve our understanding of emerging infectious diseases and to be better prepared for future outbreaks; this needs to be achieved in parallel to tackling endemic infectious diseases, such as malaria. An important lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that effective disease control needs an interdisciplinary approach, addressing the infectious agent and host populations in conjunction with so the social determinants of health and inequalities that increase risk and severity of disease.