Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World & How to Stop the Next One

The COVID-19 pandemic was not inevitable. We could have stopped it, and we still can stop the next one.Preventable is an important and illuminating book on how politics shape our health. Drawing on the recent history of outbreaks, it examines the triggers behind global health crises and why we so often get our response to them wrong. Comparing the spread of coronavirus in various parts of the world, Professor Devi Sridhar explores why countries such the US and the UK have-against expectations-suffered losses far worse than their poorer neighbours, and how the memory of other recent outbreaks led to very different outcomes in South Korea and West Africa. Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, it is a dazzling dissection of the global structures that determine our fate, and the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart. Highlighting lessons learned from past and present, Sridhar sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come. It is an urgent book that will challenge, outrage and inspire.