Pathogens never rest

Poverty is another central human factor, operating in a variety of infectious disease-inducing ways. At the national level poverty restricts the resources that can be invested in building strong national and regional health systems. At the individual and household level meanwhile, poverty forces people into unhealthy living and working environments.

Cultural factors, as the West African and DR Congo Ebola epidemics have shown, are similarly important – for example, in the transmission dangers posed by traditional burial practices involving physical contact with the deceased.

Societal gender-based roles are also important contributors, for instance in the pressure on women and girls in many developing countries to take on risky sex worker activities, exposing themselves to a variety of sex-related infections.

Cultural reluctance to accept vaccination measures is another case. Polio eradication measures for instance have been impeded in Pakistan, Nigeria and a number of other countries in the belief by some elements that the vaccine is a western world, anti-Muslim plot.

Opposition to important childhood protective vaccines (e.g. MMR) also rears its dangerous head locally in some groups and communities within developed countries, Australia included.

Vaccine and microbiocide developments and gene editing technology all offer tremendous promise in the future prevention and treatment of human infections and tend to get the most press. The successful use of an experimental vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV) in curtailing this year's DR Congo Ebola outbreak is a good example of this promise being realised.

Efforts to speed up the development of epidemic-prone infectious disease vaccines is an important part of this work. This need was one of the lessons learnt from the West African Ebola epidemic and work on this is being pursued on various fronts. An umbrella for a lot of this activity is the 2016 founded global "public-private" Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Important as these technological developments are however, it is vital not to overlook the importance of human "causes" in facilitating infectious disease outbreaks. Success in reducing the global burden of infectious disease will require integrated work on both fronts.