When discussing public health campaigns and disease prevention, most people want to immediately jump to the solution – we want a vaccine, a cure, a narrative – so we can stop the cycle of disease and suffering. But we must remember to crawl before we walk, and this cliché could not ring more true than in the world of disease monitoring and surveillance, particularly for a disease like pneumococcal, a deadly bacterial infection that kills more than 1.6 million people annually, including half a million children.