Scientific dynamic duo aims to stop the next pandemic before it starts
In the summer of 2014, a passenger landed with a fever at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria — a city of more than 20 million. At that time, neighboring countries were in the middle of what would become the largest Ebola outbreak ever, so health workers were deeply concerned.
"We were in the middle of a tragedy, on the precipice of a cataclysm," says Pardis Sabeti, a computational geneticist at the Broad Institute. "It could be unstoppable."
Scientists like Sabeti were especially worried because of a longstanding trend in this part of the world: A deadly disease would emerge in West Africa but go unnoticed or misdiagnosed — with fatal consequences.
The passenger was tested for Ebola by doctors at a public laboratory in Lagos, but the results were inconclusive — an all too common outcome, says
