How Do Emerging Infectious Diseases Affect National Security and Policy Discussions?

Amesh Adalja, MD, UPMC Center for National Security and his colleagues study recent outbreaks and work on how to better prepare the country for outbreaks like this in the future. At IDWeek 2016, Adalja explained that his team looked at non-traditional approaches as in rather scrutinizing ordinary antibiotics when you have ore and more resistance, he was "thinking about changing the whole game and going into more specific targeted therapies". He wanted to look at what's the case for bacterial phages, and question how would one facilitate the use of those in clinical settings. "We're taking what's going on in the scientific world and bridging it into the clinical and policy worlds," said Adalja.