Containing Contagion

Book excerpt: Do states have a duty to prevent infectious disease outbreaks from spreading beyond their borders? The fields of global health and international relations are increasingly concerned with the responsibilities of nations to respond to disease outbreaks in a way that safeguards their neighbors as well as the broader international community. In Containing Contagion, Sara E. Davies focuses on one of the world's most pivotal (and riskiest) regions in the field of global health—Southeast Asia, which in recent years has responded to a wave of emerging and endemic infectious disease outbreaks ranging from Nipah, SARS, and avian flu to dengue and Japanese encephalitis. Between 2005 and 2010, Davies explains, Southeast Asian states, despite having vastly different health system capacities and political systems, repeatedly committed to pursue a collective approach to the communication of outbreaks. Davies draws on newly gathered data and extensive field interviews to explore how these states implemented the revised International Health Regulations (IHR) through the deliberate alignment of political interests and regional cooperation. Examining why these Southeast Asian states adopted a collective approach, Davies also describes the complications that ensued and traces the consequences of this approach. The first book to explore what problems exist in the relationship between international relations and health, Containing Contagion frames contrasting views of global health agency within the current crises that are facing global health. Providing an immediate, contemporary example of a region networking its response to disease outbreak events, this insightful book will appeal to global health governance scholars, students, and practitioners.