SIFISO SKENJANA: AI is not just clever, it can toughen us against epidemics
New technologies are being developed for the surveillance of diseases in order to improve health system resilience
Winston Churchill once said “never let a good crisis go to waste”, referring to the importance of taking advantage of lessons learnt from times of crisis to inform how we evolve, adapt and build resilient systems. The coronavirus outbreak has wreaked havoc in the global economy, threatening the lives of more than 100,000 people and counting, with the older population particularly vulnerable to falling seriously ill. A lack of resilience in health systems threatens social and economic development in any country, and can result in long-lasting economic slumps.
According to the Journal of Infectious Disease, the 2014 Ebola outbreak cost the economies of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia about $53bn. The 2015 Zika virus was estimated to have cost the US more than $20bn, while the 2003 SARS cost about $40bn. But the largest cost of these outbreaks was the human cost — Ebola reportedly took more than 11,000 lives over a three-year period, the Zika virus resulted in newborn babies be...
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