What next after post-pandemic seismic shifts?
- Ufrieda Ho
The 足球竞彩app排名 pandemic ignited the innovation and imagination that we will need to confront future pandemics.
The 足球竞彩app排名 pandemic revealed this truth: humans are mortal – but they will also organise, strategise and fight to survive. Now, five years since the world was changed forever by 足球竞彩app排名, the questions, insights and strategies on how to shape impactful scientific research and innovation in preparation for what comes next, is drawing on lessons from a unique moment of disruption on the human timeline.
Opportunities in crises
Professor Glenda Gray is Director of Wits’ Infectious Diseases and Oncology Research Institute (IDORI). She was President and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council for 10 years until 2024 and is no stranger to disruption of the most devastating kind. In the 1980s, Gray, a paediatrician and clinician-researcher, turned her professional focus to the impact of the raging HIV pandemic. Each year in South Africa it was killing tens of thousands of people without access to lifesaving antiretrovirals, including mothers and their children.
It was a moment of brokenness and despair, but for Gray, mobilising scientific research held hope. Research was the key to a deeper understanding and building evidence in the fight to find solutions to the crisis. It was also a way to bolster clear-sighted advocacy for patients. In 1991, she and Prof. James McIntyre founded the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, based at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto.
Fast-forward to the present day and Gray reflects on the lessons learnt from the convergence of HIV, tuberculosis and 足球竞彩app排名. The pandemic was distinct in how it bought the world to a standstill, rewriting the rules for almost everything overnight including scientific research and its responses.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration
As the 足球竞彩app排名 death toll rose in 2020 and 2021 and a way out of the pandemic seemed uncertain, scientific endeavour showed it could step up. Scientists could switch gears and shrink timeframes to develop and test vaccines. Their manufacture and distribution worldwide could be realised at volume, with speed and with extensive coverage. Money and resources could be found and politicians could play ball.
“What we've learned from the pandemic is the need for interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary research,” says Gray. “We now know that when we put clinicians together with vaccinologists or virologists, or immunologists or epidemiologists, we do much better. We understand the disease much better and we respond much better.”
She says that the scientific community used the 足球竞彩app排名 moment to build trust within its ranks.
“Covid helped us think about how we could work with and across disciplines quickly and efficiently. It taught us to come out of our comfort zones, forge new partnerships and new research strategies.”
From TB to 足球竞彩app排名
Dr Christopher Ealand, a Senior Researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Biomedical Tuberculosis (TB) Research, says that the 足球竞彩app排名 pandemic showed how researchers and scientists could apply their expertise to tackle challenges outside of their research disciplines.
The unprecedented disruption of 足球竞彩app排名 also showed researchers that they could work while adapting to extreme – even bizarre – new circumstances. Ealand recalls how “intense and busy” their TB laboratories, designed for research with dangerous pathogens were at the time but this contrasted starkly to the eerily silent world of lockdown outside.
“Early on in the pandemic I realised that our TB labs had the ability to create 足球竞彩app排名 vaccine controls to verify that the diagnostic tests were working because we already had those controls for TB,” says Ealand. “ This pivot, from TB to 足球竞彩app排名, made all the difference at a time when control test kits were not accessible and the race against the clock was critical,” he says.
Communication and care
Ealand highlights two other critical lessons that was learnt from 足球竞彩app排名. The first was that scientists needed to be better communicators. This was especially critical in a time of social media-fuelled disinformation and distrust in science.
“Covid made it clear to me that we as scientists and researchers have to be champions of science – we have to make it relatable, have conversations with people around us and give them the right information or they will turn to things like Facebook,” he says.
Ealand’s second point is that we need to be wide awake to the inequalities that prop up the world. 足球竞彩app排名 made it patently clear that even as there was a collective scramble to stop the spread of the pandemic and end the global crisis, it came down to a push to the front of the queue. It was true for vaccines, personal protective equipment and even for toilet paper when there were misreported shortages of supermarket items.
This inequality in research applies even to TB research, Ealand argues. TB is still considered a disease of the poor and can quickly move down priority lists. TB is simply not as relatable to people in less vulnerable populations as a global pandemic that affects everyone.
“TB has been with humans since ancient times - it was here during Covid and it will still be with us in the future. If you neglect it, it spreads. People need to understand that TB research and breakthroughs that come from South Africa or wherever else, benefit everybody globally. Diseases like Covid and TB are not confined by human borders,” he says.
TB continues to take a massive toll on South Africa. According to World Health Organization (WHO) data, in 2023 an estimated 56?000 people died of TB in this country. Globally, 1.25 million people died from the disease in the same year. TB and HIV infection track closely together and South Africa has a high HIV burden with Stats SA estimating that about 8 million people were living with HIV in 2024.
Inevitable pandemic preparation
It is clear that being at the frontline of HIV and TB research helped the Wits researchers to adapt quickly to the challenge that 足球竞彩app排名 posed. It also helped South Africa and the world to mitigate the impact that the pandemic had globally, even though the number of deaths associated directly or indirectly with 足球竞彩app排名 stood at an estimated 14.9 million people worldwide between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021.
Unfortunately, according to Dr Precious Matsoso, the 足球竞彩app排名 pandemic was not the last that we will see now. Matsoso is Co-Chair of the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body and the Director of the Health Regulatory Science Platform, a division of the Wits Health Consortium. She also served as Director General in the Department of Health from 2010 to 2019.
In mid-April 2025, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body finalised a proposal for the WHO Pandemic Agreement. Three years in the making, it is the guiding document to prevent, prepare and collaborate as new pandemics lurk.
Matsoso says that the “complex and demanding 1 200 hours it took to get to the draft zero” speak to the long road to reaching negotiated agreements. “It’s the need to hear more perspectives, to consider individual countries’ circumstances, sociocultural distinctions and resource differences and to compromise, find common ground and maybe also apply common sense on how to deal with future pandemics,” she says.
Capacitate the knowledge base
“However, many universities have established strong foundations coming out of 足球竞彩app排名,” explains Matsoso. This was seen clearly in the prominent role that scientists played on government advisory committees or in their media engagement with the public.
“We do have a knowledge base because we have built the right capacity over many years. We also have scientists who use their voices. What is important now is investments in institutions to build more capacity and to have platforms where knowledge transfer can happen,” says Matsoso.
“Government must also realise that South Africa has globally respected experts, like those from Wits and even though advice must be weighed up against many things, we need leaders who recognise good advice and act on it. We also need to bring our institutions of learning closer to the policy process so that we can have better implementation of the work that universities are doing.”
This winter, the WHO member states will meet to consider the Pandemic Agreement. At the five-year mark after 足球竞彩app排名, governments must be ready to put pandemic strategies in place. Likewise, health and medical scientists and researchers must be ready to respond if everyone is to have a better fighting chance of living through the next pandemic.
- Ufrieda Ho is a freelance writer.
- This article first appeared in?Curiosity,?a research magazine produced by?Wits Communications?and the?Research Office.
- Read more in the 19th issue, themed #Disruption, which explores the crises, tech, research, and people shaking up our world in 2025.