ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 Pathogens without borders: ERIDs as privilege leveler? Zoonotic transmissions, public-health inequities, and biosecurity challenges underlie the transborder and transboundary dynamics involved in potential pandemics. These conditioning factors, and the identification of emerging and reemerging infectious disease (ERID)-outbreak hotspots and urban hubs of connectivity, provide the initial grist for the transnational-transmission discussion in this South-North connectivity chapter. Lessons from the SARS and Ebola experiences, including future applications of Médecins Sans Frontiéres’ ethics framework for medical research, improved protections for health-care workers, and rapid personnel and resource mobilization are considered along with efforts to limit the spread of infections by travelers and migrants. The impacts of Northern pandemic fears and vulnerabilities, limited public-health services in impoverished places, and migration impulses are explored. The World Health Assembly’s International Health Regulations (IHRs) present confinement and human-rights issues of interest in Chapter 6. The feasibility of quarantines, isolation, social exclusion, and border barriers in a mobility-driven world also receives attention along with limits on vaccine production and distribution and challenges of determining the allocation of ventilators, intensive-care units, and other scarce resources. Enhanced clinics, surveillance, information technology, and glocal responses to ERIDs are considered. The emphasis on community participation unmasks the changing face of glocal public health.
