Jan 15, 2019
In this episode 3M’s Global Head of Government Affairs Center of
Excellence, Dr. John Pournoor, joins us to discuss pandemics and
how we plan for them as a nation so that we are prepared in the
event of an outbreak.
A “pandemic” is defined by the Dictionary of Epidemiology as ‘an
epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing
international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of
people’. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics,
one of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death,
resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in
1350. The most recent pandemics include the HIV pandemic as well as
the 1918 and 2009 H1N1 pandemics.