A World Transformed: Lessons from HIV/AIDS
By Julie E. Fischer – This week marks the 30th year of living in a world transformed by awareness of AIDS – and of understanding that the devastating pandemic actually began decades earlier. This 30-year marker recognizes that on 5 June 1981, CDC published a report describing puzzling pneumonias in five previously healthy young homosexual […]
The International Health Regulations (2005): Surveillance and Response in an Era of Globalization
In an era of routine air travel and disease multipliers born of human behaviors, a public health crisis anywhere in the world is a potential problem everywhere. For over one hundred years, nations have negotiated measures to prevent cross-border disease spread. Approaches that endured through the twentieth century focused on protecting international trade and travel […]
Dr. Julie Fischer discusses global health and national security
Click here to read Julie Fischer’s interview with the The Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy report.
Cooperative Threat Reduction: Reducing Biological Risks in East Africa
By Kevin Wickel – In November 2010, Senator Richard Lugar and a team of Pentagon officials travelled to biological research facilities in Kenya and Uganda to highlight the regional bioterrorism threat. The Department of Defense has subsequently announced that the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program would, for the first time, expand its biological threat reduction […]
Containing Drug Resistant Malaria: the Risks of Weak Health Systems
By Karen Masterson – For decades, the global health community has sought affordable drugs to obliterate malaria-causing microbes – which include strains so virulent and fast acting they can kill a child the same day symptoms appear. Africans are the most in need of effective drug therapies because they are the hardest hit, absorbing 90 […]
The Revised International Health Regulations: A Framework for Global Pandemic Response
The 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak tested the revised International Health Regulations [IHR (2005)] robustly for the first time. The IHR (2005) contributed to swift international notification, allowing nations to implement their pandemic preparedness plans while Mexico voluntarily adopted stringent social distancing measures to limit further disease spread – factors that probably delayed sustained human-to-human transmission […]
Comparative Analysis of National Legislation supporting the International Health Regulations
In 2005, the World Health Organization adopted the revised InternationalHealth Regulations, or IHR (2005), to establish obligationsfor detecting and responding to public health emergencies ofinternational concern. The success of the IHR (2005) rests on the ability of statesto implement the objectives and to execute the regulations ina legal and politically acceptable manner. Implementation ofthe IHR […]
The International Flow of Risk
Greater economic integration, changing human behavior and technological innovation present unique challenges for the 21st century. Constituting a web of interdependency and transfer of risk, the Global Health Security team aims to examine contemporary, transboundary trends through the lens of public health and global security Mega Cities: The Nexus of Risk