Abstract:
While a focus on pandemic preparedness is important, it does not address long term solutions to outbreak. In our highly globalized world, massive inequalities shape an environment in which preparedness benefits those of the first world, while ignoring the majority of disease victims. This strategy may have regionally contained outbreaks thus far, however avian influenza has the potential to spread across the world. Thus, it is important to move beyond basic awareness methods when seeking to control the spread of diseases. By viewing disease outbreak as a symptom of a greater world problem, we come closer to addressing the causes of outbreak.
Policy Recommendations:
Advocate for the abolishment of industrial poultry production’s riskiest and unnatural practices.
Advocate for research on the social, structural, and evolutionary mechanisms that facilitate the creation of HPAI H5N1 within large-scale poultry production.
Reorient technical responses away from commercial, pharmaceutical, and agribusiness interests.
Advocate for the inclusion of a regional interdisciplinary discourse to create response measures and regulations that take into account human, animal, and ecosystem health.
