What do a man dying of Ebola in Liberia and a patient treated for drug-resistant tuberculosis in the United States have in common? Not only the suffering and burden of illness, but also the fact of being victims of a key set of current risks: health security risks. The Ebola crisis has once more showed to the world that global health security risks cannot be further neglected. Efforts to build stronger and more resilient health systems in the affected countries, although necessary, do not encompass the whole range of actions that are needed at the local, regional, and global levels to effectively prevent and manage future global health security crises. A more comprehensive, coherent and effective framework is needed.

This is why a forthcoming letter to the Lancet by Ilona Kickbusch (Global Health Programme, the Graduate Institute), James Orbinski (Balsille School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University; Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto), Theodor Winkler and Albrecht Schnabel (Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces) proposes to add a sustainable development goal 18 on health security, formulated as “Take appropriate action to reduce the vulnerability of people around the world to new, acute, or rapidly spreading risks to health, particularly those threatening to cross international borders”.

The  letter will be published on 21 March 2015.