Question

Global Health can be affected by politics and other issues not directly related to health. It is sometimes argued that policies do not represent the real health needs of people in society.

Can you think of a health issue or a disease outbreak in a country (at home or abroad) where the responses to the health problem have been shaped by political factors and considerations and not necessarily the needs of the population at risk? What may these factors have been? Please list at least two factors and explain why you chose them. Please be specific, provide examples and reasons for your answer. use at least one reference.

Answer 1

THE 1994 OUTBREAK OF THE plague in Surat, a city in the western India state of Gujarat, was dogged by two debates: whether it was indeed the plague and what was the place of the outbreak's origin. The ideas and interpretations voiced in response to the epidemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), the central government of India, and the state government of Gujarat help us understand differing institutional priorities and perceptions of public health. They also raise a key issue in public health pandemics today: whose voice counts more during a public health crisis? Further, what are the beliefs and anxieties, contemporary as well as historic, that color responses to outbreaks? The absence of clear agreement amongst the different authorities on how to handle the Surat outbreak created the space for several actors to project their political agenda and competing priorities.

I argue, however, that there are several concentric circles within which public health and its politics exist, and the overlap among them must be analyzed to more efficiently respond to outbreaks of epidemics. I used the chain of events and responses to the Surat epidemic, with its disparate resonances at various levels, as an example to help us understand epidemic outbreaks, from a comprehensive and interconnected perspective, as being simultaneously local and global events. I drew upon a WHO archive, international reports as well as government correspondence, scientific investigations, and press-based reporting to map these views and priorities.