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You’re just a plane ride away from infectious diseases

Saturday January 09 2016

International trade and travel has literally opened up new vistas for humans, ranging from travel to exotic places to enjoying the products and services of those distant lands.

But along with international trade and travel comes the risk of spreading infectious diseases, a growing problem in today’s global economy, researchers say.

“The Ebola outbreak made us realise that we are all just a plane ride away from exposure to emerging infectious diseases,” said Charles Perrings, a professor of environmental economics at Arizona State University.

A study published in the journal Food Security looks at how the global community is dealing with trade-related infectious disease risks of animals and plants, and asks how the system could be made more effective.

An example of the impact of an infectious disease came in 2001 in the UK. when an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease cost some $10 billion and more than 2 million sheep and cattle had to be destroyed.

More recently, African swine fever — a much more serious disease of pigs — has been spread in the Caucasus region through trade in pork, pork products or through waste in trade vehicles.

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“The more trade grows as a proportion of global production, the more likely it is that diseases will be spread through trade, and the higher the economic cost of resulting trade bans,” Prof Perrings said. “What is at risk is the food we eat, the fibres we wear and build with, and the fuels we burn.”

The researchers say current instruments to control infectious diseases are far from adequate, as the recent report of the Harvard-London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Independent Panel on the Global they say.

“One is that disease spread is an unintended (external) effect of trade. To solve this problem exporters and importers need to be confronted with the risks they impose on consumers.”

“The other is that the control of infectious disease is a public good — the benefits it offers are freely available to all, and so will be undersupplied if left to the market,” Prof Perrings explained. “To solve this problem we need to undertake cooperative, collective control of infectious diseases at the source.”

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