Globalization and Infectious Disease

Today, diseases as common as the cold and as rare as Ebola are circling the globe with near telephonic speed, making long-distance connections and intercontinental infections almost as if by satellite. You needn’t even bother to reach out and touch someone. If you live, if you’re homeothermic biomass, you will be reached and touched.

—Angier, 2001

Globalization

Pros: 
- Free trade promotes global economic growth, creates jobs and lowers prices for consumers. 
- Worldwide market for companies and consumers to access products from different countries.
- Exchange of information and culture between countries.  
- Cooperation among countries lead to ecological, environmental and financial well-being.
- Increased tolerance and open to different world views. 

Cons: 
- Exploitation of developing countries; social injustice, unfair working conditions, mismanagement of natural resources and ecological damage.
- Multinational corporations have increasing political power and less accountability 
- Americanization and spread of homogenous culture. 
- Human trafficking of men, women and children for both sex and labor. 
- Increase in the spread of communicable diseases. 

Globalization has made a lasting impact on the state of the global economy and global health. At any given time, there is a wealth of untapped knowledge just a plane flight away. However, with an increase of global travel and migration, we have witnessed an increase in the spread of infectious diseases. 

Globalization has led to overcrowded metropolis areas. 

Spread of Infectious Disease

The global spread of infectious disease is more complex than an international traveler being exposed to a tropical illness. Globalization has increased the large scale movement of goods across the world. An increase in global trade has led to the introduction of carrier vectors into unexposed environments. For example, global trade led to the reemergence of cholera in South America in 1990's. A freighter from China is thought to have expelled ballast water that contained algal blooms contaminated with cholera into South American coastal waters (Pictured below). Individuals consumed fish and crustaceans that had filtered the contaminated algea. Once individuals were infected, the disease spread rapidly across South America, fatally infecting thousands of individuals. 

Example of a freighter expelling ballast water. 

Public health professionals continue to work tirelessly towards the eradication of diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and AIDS within Africa. Not only are they concerned with migration between countries but migration within countries as well. Globalization has led to an increase in migration to urban areas due to an increase in available jobs and hope for a better lifestyle. In Africa, yellow fever is primarily found in rural areas but globalization has instilled a sense of fear that the virus could spread to more highly populated areas. Epidemiologists have been tracking the disease and sampling mosquitoes from various regions to identify patterns and predict the next outbreak. 

Epidemiological map tracking the spread of H1N1 disease.