Leaders of poor countries appear to be completely of the global connections between the health of their populations and the security and stability required to ensure that they do not fall prey to unforeseen health catastrophes. The dearth of strong and unaware transparent leadership among the world's poorest nations augurs poorly for the health of those nations, and of the world.
Leaders of poor and backward countries seem completely unaware of the need to ensure the health of their own people and avoid becoming serious victims of disease. Disaster areas are closely related to global security and stability. The lack of strong and transparent leadership in these regions has cast a shadow on the health of their own and the world's people.
Meanwhile, the rich countries also continue to think about pandemics in a very linear and scientific way, which fails to account for the comprehensive economic and political chaos that would accompany a major pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) ), Centers for Disease Control, and, for that matter, the Gates Foundation and other donors, are concentrating their efforts on vaccines and, in the case of the WHO, antiviral stockpiles for a possible outbreak of avian flu. Plans are also being developed for isolation and quarantine, running through scenarios for stopping air traffic and the like. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that the pathogens will be as responsive to our efforts as we hope they will be, leading to widespread chaos, morbidity and mortality.
At the same time, the thinking of rich and powerful countries on global epidemics is still very narrow and purely at the scientific level, without taking into full consideration the political and economic consequences that a major global epidemic will bring.
The World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other generous donors, including the Gates Foundation, are pouring much of their time and money into developing and stockpiling vaccines (or, in the case of the WTO, antiviral drugs) to prevent bird flu. may erupt again. The emergency plan being planned also includes the establishment and implementation of isolation zones for patients, and sand table simulations of measures such as the complete suspension of air traffic. Unfortunately, the response of pathogens to our preventive measures may not always be satisfactory, resulting in widespread chaos, morbidity, and death.
At a time when oil shocks have the ability to globally increase food insecurity, it may be worthwhile to consider how a pandemic could push people living on the edge into poverty and starvation. With food production suffering greatly, the urban centers that are dependent on daily imports of food could rapidly fall victim. If this sounds a bit like Jared Diamond's arguments in Collapse, it's intentional. The world is interconnected, but poor countries are hanging by a thread, and it's a thread that could quickly break if a pandemic hits hard enough.
After experiencing the instability of global food supply caused by rising oil prices, we really need to think about the consequences that may accompany a major pandemic, which will change our daily lives. Stretched people are pushed to the brink of abject poverty and even starvation. When food production is severely reduced, the people in metropolitan areas who usually rely on food imports to survive will soon suffer. If this sounds similar to what Jared Diamond describes in "Collapse," that's intentional. The whole world is in the same boat, but those poor countries are hanging on by a thin thread of life. When a strong enough epidemic strikes, the thin thread will quickly snap.
Adding to the threat, it may well be that the worst pandemics on the planet are not emerging, but have simply been with us so long that we've grown accustomed to their presence and therefore have done little to address them. Women across sub-Saharan Africa continue to stand a 1 percent chance of dying in childbirth--is that a pandemic? Five hundred thousand kids die from measles every year. Africans suffer from an astonishing estimated 300 million episodes of malaria annually, with a death toll of one million. And now throughout the developing world silent killers like heart disease and diabetes are taking hold.
Thinking deeper, perhaps the most serious epidemic on earth is not just now These issues that have arisen are problems that have existed for a long time but we are accustomed to turning a blind eye to them and therefore have not taken them seriously. Women in the southern part of the Sahara Desert in Africa have long been subject to a 1% risk of dying from childbirth. Should this also be included in the category of "epidemic"? About half a million children die from measles every year. Africans suffer an estimated 300 million cholera cases and 1 million deaths every year. There are also invisible killers such as heart disease and diabetes that are currently wreaking havoc in developing countries.
In the best of cases, pursuing a business-as-usual approach, the wealthy countries may get lucky: the spread of contagion may be stopped at borders and when it crosses, advanced, expensive treatment may be available . But no matter what, the economic and potential political destabilization that would result would cross these borders and be felt in everyone's bank accounts. The moral implications of continuing to adopt a merely defensive stance will guarantee that developing countries will suffer millions dead and may also cultivate the pathogens for future pandemics that will evade the best weapons the richer countries can throw at them.
The country may be lucky: it can first try to keep infectious disease carriers at its border crossings, and even if expensive but high-end medical treatments come in, it can still deal with them. But no matter what, the ensuing economic and potential political turmoil will still have an impact on everyone's pockets regardless of national boundaries. From the perspective of the cause-and-effect mysteries contained in morality, continuing to adopt the style of "sweeping one's own troubles" will eventually lead to the loss of millions of lives in developing countries, and may give birth to the kind of behavior that even the most advanced in wealthy countries A new generation of epidemic pathogens that all medical technologies (weapons) are unable to cure.Some might see the call for health improvement in poor nations in order to save our own skins as either a Machiavellian ploy to help poor people or a sad and ironic commentary on the state of humankind. Whatever the case, Rich nations must begin taking health systems for the poor seriously because: new bugs and the resurgence of old ones are likely to emerge where people are sickest or treatment is inconsistent; when pandemics strike, they'll do the most harm to those without health services ; and when sicknesses like a new strain of influenza inevitably come, the health personnel in these settings will be much-better equipped to identify and contain them.
Some may think of improving the health of people in poor countries as a means to In order to achieve the goal of self-saving, the appeal of "people drown themselves, drown themselves" is regarded as a cunning conspiracy to save the poor, or a sad and contradictory aside about the current situation of human society. Whatever your point of view, powerful countries must start paying more attention to health care for the poor because: the resurgence of new bacterial viruses and new generations of variants of known viruses may occur just when people are most seriously ill or when treatment is least stable. Emergence; once an epidemic rages rampant, the hardest hit will be those groups without medical care; in addition, when a new generation of influenza viruses inevitably arrives, the medical research team with the heavy responsibility will at least be able to identify it more effectively and solve them.