ABSTRACT
Introduction Environmental degradation is one of the most commonly cited areas of nontraditional security (NTS) currently impacting on the integrity of the Asia-Pacific (A-P). However, one other issue that is beginning to attract increased attention is the spread of new and re-emerging diseases. Well-publicized influenza outbreaks in Hong Kong during the latter part of the 1990s together with the more recent regional Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic across China, Taiwan and Singapore have galvanized concerns in this regard, graphically highlighting the ‘ease’ by which pathogenic organisms can transcend across state boundaries and detract from erstwhile notions of local, national and even international stability. Despite on-going developments in medical science, regions such as the A-P (in common with much of the rest of the world), have not gained any decisive immunity against disease strands, which in certain cases, have been rendered even more opportunistic by modern conditions.
