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  • CORRESPONDENCE

Europe needs to step up on epidemic preparedness

By
  1. Jonathan Ewbank

    1. European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents, Brussels, Belgium.

The cuts to funding (see Nature https://doi.org/pcxr; 2025) and changes in governance of biomedical research in the United States (see Nature https://doi.org/pcxt; 2025) could presage a severe reduction in global preparedness for infectious-disease outbreaks.

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Nature 640, 318 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01040-z

Competing Interests

J.E. is director-general of the European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents, a non-profit NGO that federates leading European BSL3 and BSL4 laboratories. Funding decisions by the European Commission and other agencies would be expected to impact ERINHA’s members’ capacity to contribute to pandemic preparedness, and ERINHA’s ability to coordinate future actions. J.E. is on secondment from INSERM that would potentially also be affected by any changes in support for BSL3 and BSL4 laboratories.

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