The world has recently seen a number of high-profile cross-border disease outbreaks and pandemics. The COVID pandemic and multi-country Mpox (monkeypox) outbreaks are just two examples.
But there is very little scientific evidence that would give a clear picture of how fast and how often infectious diseases spread across countries. A key challenge for creating global disease data is the scattering of information. Low-income countries have limited statistical capacity to keep track of disease outbreaks. And datasets from various countries are difficult to combine due to different reporting standards.
