Globalization Goes Viral
26 Aug 2009
By Sara Kuepfer Thakkar for ISN
Health can be seen as a useful barometer to measure the successes and failures of globalization. Looking at changing health conditions of citizens in a country that has integrated into the global economy provides a useful gauge for assessing the extent to which average citizens are benefiting from increased interconnectedness. The story of the 2009 swine flu outbreak, which has now developed into a global pandemic, contains both old and new aspects of human existence. In essence, globalization is accelerating, intensifying and amplifying the natural process of viral infection and mutation as it has existed since pre-human times. Indeed, the way the 2009 swine flu pandemic has developed and spread is invariably linked to globalization.
Of men, hogs and viruses
The global population has grown massively in the past few decades, gradually nearing the seven billion mark. Globalization helped lift millions out of poverty in developing countries. The rise in living standards usually goes hand-in-hand with a external pagechange in diet, particularly the increased consumption of meat. Indeed, demand and production of meat around the world is increasing rapidly. According to a Worldwatch Institute external pagereport, world meat production will have almost doubled by 2050.
Yet as land is scarce, hogs, poultry and cattle raised for meat consumption are held in ever smaller spaces. In the United States, for example, 65 million hogs are concentrated in only 65,000 mega-farms. They live by the tens of thousands in very confined spaces overflowing with excrement and manure. Besides the stresses of confinement, promiscuity and homogeneity of the genetically selected species further weaken these animals' immune systems. Under these circumstances, the rapid spread of pathogens is a given.
Experts believe that most human diseases originate in animals and are able to enter the human body after undergoing a series of mutations. Influenza viruses are very common among birds, and pigs often act as hosts to these bird flu viruses. If pigs carrying bird flu viruses also become infected with human flu viruses, bird and human viruses can mix inside their common host. This mixing can result in a recombinant event and the development of a new, hybrid viral strain that now can infect humans as well. In fact, both the 1957 and 1968 pandemics are thought to have developed inside pigs through the mixing of bird and human viruses.
The massive increase in human mobility and connectivity makes it impossible to contain contagious diseases to their respective communities of origin. One infected person boards a plane, and the disease has already spread to a whole new part of the world. Moreover, as prominent American epidemiologist Nathan Wolfe external pageexplains, "viruses that [previously] would have gone extinct locally [now] have the population density fuel they need to establish themselves and spread globally."
From small-town Mexico to the world
The epicenter of the 2009 swine flu pandemic is believed to be the small, Mexican community of La Gloria, home to Granja Carroll, a colossal hog farm. It is among the hogs of Granja Carroll where the swine flu virus is believed to have developed. Granja Carroll is a subsidiary of the US-based multinational company external pageSmithfield Foods, the world's largest pork meat producer. In fact, Smithfield Foods has been a huge beneficiary of globalization. The business grew by 1,000 percent between 1990 and 2005, when industrialized farm animal production was growing into a global, billion-dollar industry.
After Mexico joined NAFTA, which encouraged foreign investment, Mexico transited quickly from small livestock farms to industrial meat production. Multinational and transnational corporations had two main incentives to set up operations in Mexico: First, NAFTA created investment incentives for companies relocating to the country. Second, as foreign lending institutions demanded that the Mexican government cut expenditures, the Mexican government lacked sufficient means to enforce environmental and health regulations. Mexico's external pagelax laws made livestock farming relatively cheap and hassle-free – and transformed hog farms into a paradise for mutation-prone viruses.
While integrating into the global market economy, Mexico implemented a rigorous neoliberal development agenda to balance its public finances following a series of economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s. This led, among other things, to the decentralization and privatization of the health sector. When the first cases of swine flu appeared, the central government lacked the means to collect information about the new virus quickly and systematically. The implementation of nation-wide measures to stem the spread of the disease came relatively late. Valuable time had been lost.
The world wakes up
In the late 1990s, global health officials started to address the heightened potential for global pandemics as a result of increased global interconnectedness. It became clear that international cooperation mechanisms were needed to detect new diseases quickly and contain them in their communities of origin. A first test was the SARS epidemic of 2003, after which cooperation and information sharing among health agencies and research institutes around the world was enhanced.
In 2007, a new set of WHO rules known as the external pageInternational Health Regulations (IHR) came into effect, requiring all member states to adopt minimum standards of detection and response capabilities. In addition, all member states are external pagecalled upon to cooperate when confronted with "public health emergencies of international concern."
The challenge confronting these international cooperation efforts is the large divide between rich and poor countries. Many of the least developed countries simply do not have the adequate health infrastructure and medical laboratories in place to detect and combat emerging diseases in their communities of origin. Moreover, states that are weak or failing lack a strong enough central government that could coordinate early responses to disease outbreaks.
Meanwhile, some developing countries consider the developed world's push for comprehensive global health security mechanisms a selfish effort to protect their own populations from global pandemics while doing little to help developing countries improve basic health conditions. Developing countries fear that in the case of a global pandemic, they will be unable to secure vaccines and anti-viral drugs in time to protect their populations. At the same time, developed countries dispose of enough resources to produce these drugs – which may more often than not be based on virus samples provided by developing countries.
The WHO's strategy today is to identify and isolate new pandemic strains and aggressively treat and, if possible, vaccinate people that live within the radius of outbreak. Some consider this approach ineffective, considering that human societies are too mobile and interconnected for new viruses to be isolated geographically. Still, it is an approach that seems to satisfy the developed world. As Mike Davis, writing in The Guardian external pageput it:
"The mythology of bold, preemptive (and cheap) intervention against avian flu has been invaluable to the cause of rich countries, like the US and UK, who prefer to invest in their own biological Maginot lines rather than dramatically increasing aid to epidemic frontlines overseas, as well as to big pharma, which has battled developing-world demands for the generic, public manufacture of critical antivirals like Roche's Tamiflu. "
Instead of battling diseases that have already spread, international efforts should focus on detecting the root causes of emerging diseases. This is the external pageview of Wolfe, who has launched the external pageGlobal Viral Forecasting Initiative. The Initiative starts from the premise that most infectious diseases originate with animals (both wild and farm animals). Once animal diseases mutate and are able to spread to humans, people who are in close contact with animals will be the first to get infected. The Initiative seeks to monitor this focus group for new diseases. This way, new viruses can be contained before they are able to spread further. If globalization has taught us one thing about human health, it is this: Once a contagious disease has spread to a major population center, its further spread becomes virtually unstoppable.
The verdict on how globalization affects our health is not yet conclusive. Perhaps countries, through intensified cooperation, will eventually manage to nib emerging epidemics in the bud. In such a scenario, growing interconnectedness and information sharing that accompanies globalization can greatly speed up the battle against new diseases. The race is on.