The Rising Risk of Global Disease in a Connected World

Global travel and the interconnected, interdependent nature of business and society provide fast and dense networks for spreading disease. What once took months or years to transmit across continents can now happen in hours. The 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic took almost a year to circumnavigate the earth and infect approximately 1/3 of the world's population. A similar pandemic today, by comparison, would affect roughly 60% of the population and take less than three weeks to reach the most populated areas on earth. And while new diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and H5N1 Avian Influenza pose potentially lethal disruptions to life and to business as we know them, the emergence of drug resistant strains of diseases such as tuberculosis, staphylococcus and E. coli cannot be ignored.

A hyper-linked transportation grid now means that a person in Southeast Asia with H5N1 Avian Influenza, for example, can be in Washington, DC; Paris or London in less than 24 hours.

In addition to the cost of human life, these diseases can quickly wreak havoc on businesses (especially those with global operations), critical social infrastructure, and entire economies if early containment efforts fail. The World Bank estimates that a severe infection with Avian Influenza (H5N1) could kill at least 70 million people worldwide, cost $2 trillion US and plunge the world into a decade-long depression. Also at risk today are animals and plants, and the safety of a food supply network that has become Byzantine.

Veratect Foreshadow^TM

At the heart of Veratect is Foreshadow^TM, our operating environment, and the VeraSight^TM interface. Together they represent a leap forward in the early detection, 24/7 tracking and actionable alert generation of emerging threats worldwide. Our team of cultural and linguist interpreters represents 230+ person years of international experience and nearly 100 person years of experience in this new and proven professional discipline.

The Benefits of Veratect^TM

Veratect provides timely and actionable information that supports informed decisions across a broad range of public and private institutions. By identifying emerging risks early, actions can be taken that save human life, enable loss control, preserve business processes, safeguard supply chain operations and facilities, better manage financial reporting and insurance coverage, and mitigate potential class action lawsuits due to negligence in responding to threats in a timely manner. This includes the material exposure heightened for those with headquarters or facilities in the UK due to the recently governed Corporate Manslaughter Act. While every business on earth may be affected in the event of a global pandemic, the increase in occurrence and severity of many avoidable illnesses, and the mere threat of them, affect businesses around the world every year.