Pandemics - Background paper (original) (raw)
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Planning for Pandemics: Lessons From the Past Decade
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2014
It is now 10 years since the disease we now know as SARS-severe acute respiratory syndromecaused more than 700 deaths around the world and made more than 8,000 people ill. More recently, in 2009 the global community experienced the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century-the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. This paper analyses the major developments in international public health law relating to infectious diseases in the period since SARS and considers their implications for pandemic planning.
Pandemic Influenza Preparedness: In Search of a Global Health Ethos
In early 2007, the Indonesian government made a controversial decision to withhold its H5N1 avian flu virus samples from World Health Organisation Collaborating Centres pending a new global mechanism for virus sharing that had better terms for developing countries. In doing so, it helped to reframe the discourse on international health cooperation and " global health citizenship " in relation to infectious diseases of pandemic potential. The 60 th World Health Assembly in May 2007 resolved that the global alert and response system for pandemic influenza should go beyond the obligations and responsibilities of member states in infectious diseases surveillance, reporting of disease outbreaks, and sharing of viral isolates and information as its principal terms of reference. The sharing of other benefits from this global alert and response system, such as equitable access to affordable vaccines developed from these viral source materials, is now prominently on the agenda of global health diplomacy. Based on documentary sources and a re-reading of published materials, this paper argues that global infectious disease surveillance has largely catered to the priorities of developed countries, with little consideration for how the duties and obligations of these regimes might accord with the health priorities and needs of developing countries. In the absence of reciprocal benefits, the International Health Regulations (2005) for instance, which impose mandatory disease reporting obligations on signatory member states, could reduce poorer front-line states to the role of pandemic " canaries " in an early warning system for emergent flu pandemics. This report was the fruit of an 18-month study undertaken by a multidisciplinary committee jointly chaired by the eminent microbiologists Joshua Lederberg (Nobel laureate in medicine or physiology, 1958) and Robert Shope. Notwithstanding its title, it was quite clear that these national concerns over emergent and re-emergent infectious diseases in an affluent country would inevitably take on an international dimension.
Planning for large epidemics and pandemics
Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases
Purpose of review Less than two decades into the 21st century, the world has already witnessed numerous large epidemics or pandemics. These events have highlighted inadequacies in both national and international capacity for outbreak prevention, detection, and response. Here, we review some of the major challenges from a policy perspective. Recent findings The most important challenges facing policymakers include financing outbreak preparedness and response in a complex political environment with limited resources, coordinating response efforts among a growing and diverse range of national and international actors, accurately assessing national outbreak preparedness, addressing the shortfall in the global biomedical workforce, building surge capacity of both human and material resources, balancing investments in public health and curative services, building capacity for outbreak-related research and development, and reinforcing measures for infection prevention and control.
The background paper provides an introduction to the concept of pandemics and to the ethical and political issues related with pandemic preparedness.
Global Health Needs Modernized Containment Strategies to Prepare for the Next Pandemic
Frontiers in Public Health, 2022
COVID-19 continues to be a public health crisis, while severely impacting global financial markets causing significant economic and social hardship. As with any emerging disease, pharmaceutical interventions required time, emphasizing the initial and continuing need for non-pharmaceutical interventions. We highlight the role of anthropological and historical perspectives to inform approaches to non-pharmaceutical interventions for future preparedness. The National Academy of Medicine, a not-for-profit, non-governmental US-based medical watchdog organization, published a key document early in the COVID-19 pandemic which points to inadequate quarantine and containment infrastructure as a significant obstacle to an effective pandemic response. In considering how to implement effective quarantine policies and infrastructure, we argue that it is essential to take a longitudinal approach to assess interventions that have been effective in past pandemics while simultaneously addressing and eliminating the negative socio-historical legacies of ineffective quarantine practices. Our overview reinforces the need for social equity and compassion when implementing containment.
The main challenges in pandemic management: understanding global health security's current obstacles
The COVID-19's pandemic highlights the urgency of a global health security and infectious diseases agenda, as well as a need to effectively exercise the health governance mechanisms available or to be devised by the international community. This article seeks to identify and briefly discuss the main challenges pandemic's governance faces today, as to contribute to all efforts to address this need. They are four: the crisis of WHO as the main agent of global health governance; the limits of the international cooperation initiatives for development of national capacities in public health so far; international patent law and the obstacles to universal access to healthcare; and the restrictions to human mobility and the disrespect to human rights in times of health crisis. As an analysis method, extensive academic literature, official documents, and journalistic clippings are used in order to instruct the hypothesis proposed. Therefore, this paper is an analytical effort to bring the issue of global health security closer to the field of International Relations and Social Sciences, valuing the construction of a sustainable and comprehensive approach to global health and pandemic response.