A Safer Future?
By Prof. Peter Curson, Professor of Population and Security, The University of Sydney, Australia

The recently released World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Report 2007 A Safer Future holds some chilling messages for all of us facing life in the 21st Century. According to the WHO, the world faces a new era of infectious disease and, as usual, the culprit is us.

Human behaviour and agency lies at the heart of all the disease threats we face – whether it be how we interact with and transform our natural environment, the growing world trade in wildlife, factory farming of poultry in South Asia, poor food preparation, poor hygiene in our hospitals, or the fact that roughly two billion of us now travel by air all over the globe, often passively transporting new infections around the world.

The WHO Report argues that new infections are emerging and spreading faster than at any other time in human history, while older infections, once thought under control and destined for the global scrapheap, are reappearing, redistributing and continuing to wreck havoc. Over the last three decades so called ‘new’ infections have appeared at the rate of at least one per year and we now face more than 40 infectious diseases, which were unknown or thought controlled a generation ago. In addition, epidemic outbreaks are becoming more common. Since 2002 the WHO has identified at least 1100 such epidemic events worldwide. SARS and Bird Flu remain in the collective memory not only because they caused substantial human suffering and resulted in considerable economic damage, but also because as psycho-social events they captured the public imagination, triggered international concern, and produced a field day for the media… subsequently producing considerable panic and hysteria worldwide. But they were not alone. Outbreaks of other viral diseases have become common. Ebola, Marburg Virus, Nipah Virus, West Nile Virus all pose threats to world security and raise critical issues about global cooperation, surveillance and response.

But it is not simply new emerging infections which should concern us. Older infections, once thought under control have come back to haunt us. Fifty years ago, we thought that DDT spraying would remove the threat of a wide range of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue. As it turns out nothing could have been further from the truth. These and other mosquito-borne diseases have re-emerged, often in more virulent forms. Dengue in particular has surged in recent years with millions affected, and globally the number of cases reported to the WHO has doubled in each of the last four decades.

Finally, the threat of another pandemic of influenza has preoccupied most governments over the last few years. Based on past experience, some experts predict that in the advent of a new pandemic, 1.5 billion people around the world would be affected. In the words of the WHO, it is naïve and complacent to assume that the world will not see another disease like AIDS or SARS over the next few years.

The global health tally sheet does not stop there. Food borne diseases are having a heyday as globalisation affects production, storage, distribution and preparation. The trade of contaminated foodstuffs between countries is on the rise, as is the incidence of contamination from sloppy institutional and home food preparation.

New threats have also appeared in the 21st Century. Among these the threat of bioterrorism looms large. The anthrax expisode in the USA, when potentially lethal anthrax spores were sent through the postal system, placed bioterrorism firmly on the 21st century security agenda. The use of smallpox as a bioterror weapon continues to worry authorities here and abroad and it is not without note that the U.S. Government has been placing its old smallpox vaccine stocks with a new generation vaccine.

The problem of growing antibiotic resistance and the use and misuse of antibiotics particularly in animals raises other questions. Like food borne disease, antibiotic resistant infections are a growth industry, particularly in our hospitals.

So what needs to be done to secure a safer world? The WHO places emphasis on international cooperation and collaboration, effective systems of surveillance, alert and response, of strengthening local health systems and encouraging cross-sector collaborations within government. More reactive than proactive perhaps, but in an uncertain, insecure world, certainly essential.

- reprinted from the Fall 2007 issue of the Virox Technologies Solutions newsletter.