More than 125 years ago, Louis Pasteur created public-private non-profit organizations, first in Paris and then throughout the world, to fight against infectious diseases at a global level. Pasteur’s humanist and very modern view of translational multidisciplinary science for the benefit of populations, and without borders, resulted in key breakthroughs in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, starting with vaccination against rabies to comprehensive research on Ebola today. In the spirit of Louis Pasteur, the past three decades of HIV/AIDS science are a good example of a broad response to an emerging human threat to improve global health. Moreover, this good lesson has helped instruct an informed response against the recent Ebola outbreak, and must be kept in mind for other emerging diseases.