Vital Systems Security

Not surprisingly, prominent among the recommendations of the World at Risk report is a call for “global monitoring of infectious diseases”. “Crucial to mounting a defense against biological weapons development and attack is the early detection and reporting of outbreaks of infectious disease, a capability known as disease surveillance” (37). Moreover, World at Risk emphasizes the global geography and pre-diagnostic temporality of this future surveillance. “In addition, the United States should offer bilateral assistance to those developing countries at greatest risk of epidemics, helping them to establish surveillance networks for detecting and reporting both human and animal disease outbreaks prior to a confirmed laboratory diagnosis” (70). Doing so could provide, in their vision, an “’extended defense perimeter’ around the United States” (40).

It is striking to me that calls for enhancing “disease surveillance”—and in particular, global or international disease surveillance—have been appearing for at least fifteen years now. For example, the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine report Emerging Infections emphasized increasing ‘national and international disease surveillance’ as the key to preventing and mitigating emerging outbreaks of disease. “The key to recognizing new or emerging infectious diseases, and to tracking the prevalence of more established infectious diseases, is surveillance” (IOM 113). Yet in important ways these statements are not saying exactly the same thing. What has changed and what has stayed the same? Read the rest of this entry »