Taiwan’s international participation is vital to ensuring global health security

ACCORDING to the WHO estimate released on April 21, 2014, a total of 774 lives were claimed in the SARS outbreak in 2003. Far beyond the nations where it claimed the most victims, SARS traumatized the world with vast economic disruptions, deeply impacting international trade and travel that year and in the nervous months that followed.

Yet such threats are far from over: emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola and MERS have followed. These are the threats we understand a little about—yet what we really have to fear are the threats we cannot name. Even as global health experts gather, new and unmapped outbreaks can spread rapidly across the globe. More rapidly than ever, arguably, as air travel statistics show that more people are flying, with more of the world than ever within a day’s travel.