[EQ] Health and Conflict Prevention

Health and Conflict Prevention

Editor: Anders Mellbourn

Anna Lindh Programme on Conflict Prevention, 2006 edition

Available online as PDF file [186p.] at:
http://www.med.unsw.edu.au/SPHCMWeb.nsf/resources/Ana_Lindh.pdf/$file/Ana_Li
ndh.pdf

“….Public health has captured the public mind as a security issue. Both the
aftermath of the Christmas tsunami disaster in 2004 and the pandemic threat
from avian flu in 2005 were of great concern to millions of people in
different parts of the world. HIV/AIDS was proclaimed a security threat
already in the mid 1990s.

There has been much violence and death. Still these are not issues of
military security that can be confronted with traditional security and
defence policies. The threat of future outbursts of disease can not be
confronted either by containment or by military preventive intervention.
This edition, the third in a series of publications from the Anna Lindh
Programme on Conflict Prevention, deals with health and conflict prevention
and includes public health as an issue of diplomacy and case studies of
urgent health issues. [from A Zwi]

“…..A society which is not physically healthy cannot be politically healthy.
When large parts of the population suffer from a disease it has an impact on
the economy and on governance. To counter these effects Governments may use
coercive measures which infringe on human rights or ration healthcare to
privileged parts of the population, creating social tensions. Chronic and
endemic diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, in addition create
distortions in demography and, it has been argued, a sense of fatalism which
can be exploited by extremists.

HIV/AIDS is a good example of disease which has a significant impact on the
stability of a State, but others should not be ignored. Malaria has a
different epidemiology but it has an equally devastating impact where it is
endemic. Enteric diseases like cholera, typhoid and dysentery have ongoing
debilitating effects.

Zoonoses also sap the strength of a country and limit its potential for
positive development. More importantly when a highly infectious agent jumps
from its animal reservoir into the human population the outcome can be
devastating. Europe is all to well aware of the impact of BSE and the
appearance of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza has created a certain sense
of foreboding.

Of themselves these diseases do not threaten state security but the fear
they engender in a population is significant and should the worst forecasts
come to pass then there are real threats to stability……” [Snippet]

Content:

Introduction

Javier Solana: The Health Dimension to Security ·

Markos Kyprianou: From Mad Cows to Avian Flu

— European Responses to Avert Medical Catastrophes ·

Zsuzsanna Jakab: What Role Can European Health Policy Play in Conflict
Prevention? ·

Health, Conflict and International Relations

David A. Hamburg: Conflict Prevention and Health: An Array of Opportunities
·

John Wyn Owen: Rise of Health as a Foreign Policy Issue: The European
Perspective ·

Disease Control: Actors and Cases

Frida Kuhlau: Disease Outbreaks: Managing Threats to Health and Security ·

Scott C. Ratzan: Health Diplomacy in the 21st Century: Ideas for Engagement
with the Private Sector ·

Jerker Liljestrand & Jeffrey V. Lazarus: HIV/AIDS

— a Global Threat that Medicine Alone Cannot Cure ·

Zihe Rao: Combating SARS in China: Experiences and Efforts to Coordinate
Future Prevention ·

Anthony B. Zwi & Natalie J. Grove: Challenges to Human Security: Reflections
on Health, Fragile States and Peacebuilding

Current Affairs

Hans Blix & Manne Wängborg: Countering Biological Weapons ·

Pekka Haavisto: The EU Response to the Darfur Crisis ·

Postscript

Anders Mellbourn: The Responsibility to Report

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Received on Mon Oct 2 13:03:57 2006