Keywords
Global health
Global bioethics
Vulnerability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17566/ciads.v10i3.777How to Cite
Abstract
Covid-19 is not merely a national or regional threat but a global one. It requires coordinated action of the global community. Such action, as argued in this paper, should primarily focus on the question how to prevent the next pandemic. Humankind has been warned multiple time for emerging diseases and the risks of pandemics, although no preparatory responses have been undertaken. Preventive interventions are possible since it is known how and where infectious diseases emerge. Such interventions proceed on the basis of shared vulnerability and responsibility for global health. The fact that they have been inadequate thus far, can be considered as a serious moral failure.
References
Howard-Jones N. The scientific background of the International Sanitary Conferences, 1851-1938. Geneva: World Health Organization; 1975.
Brown TM, Cueto M, Fee E. The World Health Organization and the transition from “international” to “global" public health”. American Journal of Public Health 2006; 96 (1): 62-72.
Holst J. 2020. Global health – emergence, hegemonic trends and biomedical reductionism. Globalization and Health 2020; 16, 42. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-020-00573-4
Ten Have H. Wounded planet. How declining biodiversity endangers health and how bioethics can help. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2019.
Harrison M. A global perspective: Reframing the history of health, medicine, and disease. Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 2015;89:739-689.
Koplan JP, Bond TC, Merson MH, et al. 2009. Towards a common definition of global health. Lancet 2019; 373: 1993–1995.
Whitmee S, Haines A, Beyrer C, et al. Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch. Report of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on planetary health. Lancet 2015; 386: 1978.
Horton R, Beaglehole R, Bonita R, et al. From public to planetary health: a manifesto. The Lancet 2014; 383: 847.
WHO. World health report 2007 – A safer future: global public health security in the 21st century. Geneva: WHO; 2007.
Ten Have H. Vulnerability as the antidote to neoliberalism in bioethics. Revista Redbioetica/UNESCO 2014; 5 (1; no.9): 87-92.
Ten Have H. Respect for human vulnerability: The emergence of a new principle in bioethics. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 2015; 12 (3): 395-408.
Institute of Medicine. Emerging infections. Microbial threats to health in the United States. Washington: National Academy Press; 1992.
Wolfe N. The viral storm. The dawn of a new pandemic age. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin; 2011.
Wolfe ND, Panosian Dunavan C, Diamond J. Origins of major infectious diseases. Nature 2007; 447: 279-283.
Khan AS. The next pandemic. On the frontlines against humankind’s gravest dangers. New York: PublicAffairs; 2020.
Fee E, Brown TM. Preemptive biopreparedness: Can we learn anything from history? American Journal of Public Health 2001; 91 (5): 721-726.
World Health Organization. SARS risk assessment and preparedness framework. Geneva: WHO; 2004. Available from: https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/CDS_CSR_ARO_2004_2.pdf
World Health Organization. Regional Office for the Western Pacific. SARS: How a global epidemic was stopped. Manila: WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific; 2006. Available from: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501
World Health Organization. Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel; 2015. Available from: https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/ebola/report-by-panel.pdf?ua=1
Moon S, Sridhar D, Pate MA, et al. Will Ebola change the game? Ten essential reforms before the next pandemic. The report of the Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola. Lancet 2015; 386: 2204-2221.
World Health Organization. WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2005. Available from: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/68998
Ribes M. Covid-19 retrospective, a disaster that should have been averted. Bioethics Observatory, 2020, September 18. Available from: https://bioethicsobservatory.org/2020/09/coronavirus-crisis-responsibilities-exoneration/36839/
Trust for America’s Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Outbreaks: protecting Americans from infectious diseases. Washington, 2015. Available from: https://www.tfah.org/report-details/outbreaks/
Pegg D. What was Exercise Cygnus and what did it find? The Guardian, 2020, May 7. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/what-was-exercise-cygnus-and-what-did-it-find
Horton R. The Covid-19 catastrophe. Cambridge: Polity; 2020.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise After-Action Report. Washington, 2020. Available from: https://www.governmentattic.org/38docs/HHSaarCrimsonContAAR_2020.pdf
Brown J. Influenza. The hundred-year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. New York: Simon & Schuster; 2018.
Global Health Security Index. Building collective action and accountability, 2019. Available from: https://www.ghsindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-Global-Health-Security-Index.pdf
Kandel N, Chungong S, Omaar A, Xing J. Health security capacities in the context of Covid-19 outbreak: an analysis of International Health Regulations annual report data from 182 countries. Lancet 2020; 395: 1047-1053.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Addressing emerging infectious disease threats: a prevention strategy for the United States (Executive Summary). MMWR 43 (No. RR-5), 1994, 1-23.
World Wide Fund for Nature. Living Planet Report 2020 - Bending the curve of biodiversity loss. Gland (Switzerland): WWF; 2020. Available from: https://f.hubspotusercontent20.net/hubfs/4783129/LPR/PDFs/ENGLISH-FULL.pdf
Daszak P. We are entering an era of pandemics – it will end only when we protect the rainforest. The Guardian, 2020, 28 July. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/pandemic-era-rainforest-deforestation-exploitation-wildlife-disease
Vidal J. ‘Tip of the iceberg’: is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19? The Guardian, 2020, March 18. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe
World Health Organization. An R&D Blueprint for action to prevent epidemics. Funding & coordination models for preparedness and response, 2016. Available from: https://www.who.int/blueprint/what/improving-coordination/workstream_5_document_on_financing.pdf?ua=1
World Health Organization. Prioritizing diseases for research and development in emergency contexts, 2018. Available from: http://www.emro.who.int/pandemic-epidemic-diseases/news/list-of-blueprint-priority-diseases.html
Bellagio Initiative on the Global Virome Project. 2016. Available from: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/581a4a856b8f5bc98311fb03/t/582120e4ff7c5080cc611fd6/1478566120350/GVP+Bellagio+Initiative.pdf
Langreth R. Five steps to prevent the next pandemic. NDTV, 2021, Feb 4. Available from: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/five-steps-to-prevent-the-next-pandemic-2362755
Smith MJ, Upshur REG. Ebola and learning lessons from moral failures: Who cares about ethics? Public Health Ethics 2015; 8 (3): 305-318.
Smith MJ, Upshur REG. Learning lessons from Covid-19 requires recognizing moral failures. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 2020; 17: 563-566.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2021 Henk ten Have (Autor)