Global Health and International Security (Global Insights‪)‬

Historically in the West, disease was often seen as an impediment to exploration and a challenge to winning a war. Cholera and other diseases killed at least three times more soldiers in the Crimean War than did the actual conflict. Malaria, measles, mumps, smallpox, and typhoid felled more combatants than did bullets in the American Civil War. And the Panama Canal went over schedule because of "tropical" diseases-then unknown, untreatable, and often fatal. Today, in an interconnected world, bacteria and viruses travel almost as fast as e-mail and financial flows. Globalization has connected Bujumbura to Bombay and Bangkok to Boston. There are no health sanctuaries. No impregnable walls exist between a world that is healthy, well-fed, and well-off and another that is sick, malnourished, and impoverished. Globalization has shrunk distances, broken down old barriers, and linked people. Problems halfway around the world become everyone's problem. Like a stone thrown on the waters, a difficult social or economic situation in one community can ripple and reverberate around the world.