Understanding global security - Peter Hough

HEALTH THREATS TO SECURITY
The globalization of health security
In common with the other areas of global security, globalization is for health a twoedged
sword. It brings with it new threats and challenges but also new opportunities
for better coping with threats both old and new. Although the opportunities for
diseases to diffuse throughout humankind are greater than ever before, the means
of mobilizing resistance to this are also greater than ever before and can only get
stronger. The widening and deepening of politics characteristic of the modern global
condition offer a number of possibilities which can enhance the health security of all
people and, in particular, those most insecure in the less developed world.
The use of information technology to advance
the global dispersion of medical knowledge
Over recent years there have been major advances in the use of computer and
communications technology to advance the knowledge of and means to contain and
control the spread of disease. The WHO launched the Health Inter Network in 2000
in an effort to offset the perennial criticism that the fruits of globalization are rarely
enjoyed globally. To improve medical knowledge in LDCs, in line with its horizontal
strategy, the WHO has promoted free internet access to over 1000 online medical
journals and helped make available cheap software for improving medical delivery
systems (Hagmann 2001: 903). Private information systems, such as ProMED and
TravelMED, perform similar services, but the WHO’s global reach and public
orientation give their network greater significance and scope for future development.
The use of information technology to strengthen
global policy
IT advances have also served to strengthen the capacity to detect and respond to
disease outbreaks at global level. Despite concerns over the dilution of its political
leadership in global health the WHO, with its near universal membership and
undoubted epistemic leadership, has been able to put itself at the forefront of this
development and give greater authority to existing global rules on disease notification
as well as opening the way for the development of further ones. An Outbreak
Verification System was initiated in 1997, to improve on the previous system of relying
on official state notifications to the WHO of significant disease outbreaks. As mentioned
earlier, some governments can be coy about releasing such information, while
others might lack the capacity to do so effectively. Part of this system is the Global
Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) which routinely scans media sources
for epidemiological information and passes it on to the WHO to verify and inform
relevant authorities in an early warning system. The significance of this development
is shown in the figures: of all initial reports gathered under the system in the first
two years of its operation, 71 per cent came from unofficial (generally media) sources
rather than official ones (Grein et al. 2000: 100). The Global Outbreak and Alert
Response Network (GOARN) in 2000 further developed this capability by globalizing
173