OPINION: Despite continuing global efforts to contain avian influenza, or bird flu, the means of engineering this potentially deadly H5N1 virus to render it transmissible to humans is freely available on the internet. So too are similar instructions for engineering a virus like the "Spanish flu", which killed some 50 million people in the pandemic of 1918-19.

The digital floodgates opened in 2011 when a peak US regulatory watchdog came down in favour of scientists seeking to publishing their work engineering the H5N1 virus. The decision to uphold such "scientific freedom" was and remains, highly contentious among the global scientific community. Its implications, however, are readily available as online "recipes" for potentially dangerous viruses, which add a new risk to the already considerable challenges of maintaining global biosecurity in the 21st century. For all the recent advances in biomedical science, drugs, vaccines and technology, this is a challenge we remain ill-equipped to meet.

Outbreaks of H5N1 since 1997 have resulted in millions of poultry infections, over 800 human cases and many deaths.

As long as micro-organisms can mutate and change, life on earth will always be vulnerable to epidemics. Whether they are deliberately, accidentally or naturally seeded, contagious diseases can race around the world in a matter of days or weeks causing immense personal, social and economic harm. H5N1 bird flu first "jumped" from poultry to humans in Hong Kong in 1997 and outbreaks since in Asia, Europe, Africa, North America and most recently in Egypt, have resulted in millions of poultry infections, over 800 human cases and many deaths.

The catastrophic West Africa Ebola outbreak last year merely reinforces the need for well co-ordinated global response systems. This most severe of all viral haemorrhagic fevers appeared in March 2014 for the first time in West Africa, but the alarm was not sounded by the World Health Organisation until mid-August – despite a known 90 per cent fatality rate and severely weakened healthcare systems in the war-torn African regions first hit. As the authoritative British medical journal The Lancet recently concluded, Ebola exposed our "dangerously fragile global system for outbreak response.

The shortcomings of global efforts to contain Ebola, at a cost of at least 11,000 lives, have been raked over by many investigating agencies since. Various compounding factors have been blamed, not least of which was poor co-ordination and collaboration and, at times, even conflict among the many agencies and stakeholders deployed to help.

This doesn't just mean frontline health workers. It can also take armies, lawyers, police, managers, transport and logistics experts, to name just a few, to contain an epidemic. In effect, our global system failed to alert us to act urgently, and did not effectively enable us to work together when we did respond.

We must also now factor in the darker threat of bioterrorism.

We must be better prepared for the next crisis. Unstoppable globalised trade, a "just in time" economy, mass people movements and rapid urbanisation – plus the effectiveness of aircraft as vectors for disease – mean we are all interconnected. With global warming, the range of natural disease vectors like mosquitoes is expanding. More frequent extreme weather events will inevitably leave affected communities vulnerable to outbreaks of disease on the back of natural disasters. We must also now factor in the darker threat of bioterrorism.

In Australia, we have just taken the first step towards building a new collaborative global approach. A new UNSW-led National Health and Medical Research Centre of Research Excellence for Integrated Systems for Epidemic Response (ISER) is the first centre of its type in the world, and our mission is just as unique. We will bring together Australian and international leaders in field epidemiology and epidemic response, military experts, international law and risk science experts and government and non-government agencies to ensure the many vital aspects of epidemic control are both effectively coordinated – and supported by the best research – long before they come together in the field.

With Australia's terrorism threat level currently at "probable" and easy access to online "recipes" for contagious diseases, bioterrorism is a real threat. Every step we take now to work together more effectively across disciplines and across borders helps build our common defences against the many risks posed by contagious diseases.

Raina MacIntyre is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at UNSW and the director of the National Health and Medical Research Centre of Research Excellence for Integrated Systems for Epidemic Response. The Centre will be launched today.

This opinion piece was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald.