Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert

by Weir; Lorna

• ISBN13: 9780415958424
• ISBN10: 0415958423
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Global Public Health Vigilanceis the first sociological book to investigate recent changes in how global public health authorities imagine and respond to international threats to human health. This book explores a remarkable period of conceptual innovation during which infectious disease, historically the focus of international disease control, was displaced by "international public health emergencies," a concept that brought new responsibilities to public health authorities, helping to shape a new project of global public health security. Drawing on research conducted at the World Health Organization, this book analyzes the formation of a new social apparatus, global public health vigilance, for detecting, responding to and containing international public health emergencies. Between 1995 and 2005 a new form of global health surveillance was invented, international communicable disease control was securitized, and international health law was fundamentally revised. This timely volume raises critical questions about the institutional effects of the concept of emerging infectious diseases, the role of the news media in global health surveillance, the impact of changes in international health law on public health reasoning and practice, and the reconstitution of the World Health Organization as a power beyond national sovereignty and global governance. It initiates a new research agenda for social science research on public health.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	p. vii
List of Abbreviations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Knowing Global Public Health	p. 1
Global Public Health Emergency Vigilance
Surveillance?
Post-Westphalian Governance?
Vigilance
Outbreak or Emergency?
These Chapters
Revitalizing the Sociology of Public Health
The Sociology of Public Health: An Overview
The History of the Present
Studies in the Social Organization of Knowledge
A Dialogue
Research Design
Emerging Infectious Diseases: An Active Concept	p. 29
Inventing a Disease Concept
Internationalizing Emerging Infectious Diseases
The US-Canadian Alliance
The 1994 Who Consultation
The 1995 Who Consultation
A Strategic Plan
A Vigilance Apparatus
The Power/Knowledge Relations of EID
Conceptual Instability
EID and Development Assistance for Health
Conclusion
Early Warning Outbreak Detection and Alert: A Technique	p. 63
Postcolonial Knowledge of Outbreak
Online Early Warning Outbreak Detection and Alert
Outbreak Detection
Outbreak Verification
Relations between Official and Unofficial Knowledge
Conclusion
From Infectious Disease to Public Health Emergency	p. 108
The International Health Regulations (1969): A Disease List and its Critique
Problematizing the Infectious Disease List
EID and the Critique of International Health Law
The International Heath Regulations (2005)
Conclusion
A World on Alert: Emergency Vigilance in Global Biopolitics	p. 140
Global Emergency Vigilance as an Epistemological Shift
The Target of Public Health Action
The Coordination of Surface and Depth Knowledge
Temporal Standard
Public Health Emergencies and Security
Who as a Suprasovereign Power
Conceptualizing the Political in Global Biopolitics
Conclusion
Concluding	p. 169
Notes	p. 181
Bibliography	p. 191
Index	p. 211
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