In 2014, the world’s eyes were pointed towards West Africa, where an Ebola outbreak was claiming the lives of thousands of people, including caregivers and laboratory workers. However, long before that, the virus was already quietly circulating. By the time the virus had been identified, the outbreak was hard to contain, and it led to devastating consequences. To understand how to prevent this from happening again, Irene and Jacques traveled to Boston, to meet with Pardis Sabeti at the Broad Institute, and to Kenema, Sierra Leone, to meet the team that handled the emergency on site. What they learned from Pardis and her partners is that the world needs sensitive tools to identify infectious threats and track their spread in real time, empowering the public health community to save lives and stop the next epidemic before it starts.
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