Over the past fifteen years, global health has been threatened by Ebola epidemics in West Africa, the emergence of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the spread of Zika through the Americas, and the 2009 influenza pandemic. The tolls of each event have been exacerbated by inadequate data systems. Ongoing struggles to track the global spread of COVID-19 demonstrate the need to fix problems in existing surveillance for infectious diseases.
