The economics of improving global infectious disease surveillance

### Summary box With the global increase in population density, urbanisation, and travel trade, threat of widespread outbreaks infectious diseases has increased relentlessly,1 as evidenced by recent examples COVID-19 Ebola. Further, although most important causes death shifted to non-communicable diseases, some poorer parts world, communicable remain cause death.2 Crucial prevention reaction these threats is early detection, which demands an disease surveillance system that can signal unusual events. How set up improve how prioritise investments are questions need input from different scientific disciplines. Here, we focus on economic considerations. The best recognised purpose (early) detection epidemics other health threats. New diagnostic tools such unbiased targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) being explored options allow determine unexplained outbreaks, trace link sources transmission, facilitate a better understanding viruses bacteria pass animal humans. With NGS, same platforms sometimes even protocols be …