Who are we?
We are the ‘Leibniz Lab Pandemic Preparedness.’ As our name suggests, we are preparing for a pandemic. A pandemic is a word describing when people all over the world quickly become ill with the same disease over a very short period of time. We are a group of scientists.
We are located in 41 different research centers all over Germany. Our motto is ‘One Health, One Future.’ This means that we are all working together to prevent future pandemics.
What do we hope to achieve?
We simply want everyone to be able to live their lives. Even if another crisis like the coronavirus pandemic occurs. Children should be able to go to school and people should be able to go to work. We are looking at ways to make this happen. We then present these ideas to politicians. We hope that this will help us to protect everyone better.
Was tun wir?
An important part of our work is to better understand how new diseases that could trigger a pandemic can emerge. We develop proposals to reduce the risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans. We have lots ideas for this. For example, we look at how people house animals. We consider how animals and humans can thrive and live together.
However, we don't only deal with diseases and how to cure them. We don't want anyone to get sick. Staying healthy is better than needing to be cured. That's why we conduct research into healthy living conditions. We also consider how houses or entire cities can be built better so that fewer people get sick.
We want to help the people that need it most. Our goal is that no one is left on their own. We are also therefore considering how doctors and other caregivers can be better equipped.
We also want people to know more about and understand what can happen during a pandemic. That's why we are looking at the experiences from the last coronavirus pandemic and are learning from them. To do things better the next time around.
But, how long will this take?
We not only want to help make sure that everyone knows more about pandemics. We also want politicians to use our findings. But that's not easy, which is why our work takes time. A long time. We need about two years. We will then tell the politicians everything we have found out.