NEJM | In this insightful commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Bill Gates writes that governments have a central leadership role to play not only in dealing with the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in creating a sustainable system to improve the way we respond to outbreaks in general, and to keep outbreaks from happening again. The long-term challenge — improving our ability to respond to outbreaks — isn’t new. Global health experts have been saying for years that another pandemic whose speed and severity rivaled those of the 1918 influenza epidemic was a matter not of if but of when. This article provides a roadmap to how society can meet the challenge.