Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter 1
critical cases
andrew F. cooper, John J. Kirton, and Michael a. Stevenson
Global health is in a cascading crisis as the powerful process of globalisation gathers
ever more of the world in its grip. amidst the many material and epistemic advances
brought by globalisation, many millions of people still die annually from infectious
and chronic disease. these mega deaths are made all the more tragic, threatening,
and morally reprehensible precisely because so many are predictable, preventable,
and treatable now.
For most of the past millennium, many died quickly, painfully, and prematurely
from infectious diseases such as smallpox, plague, and cholera. they died in large
part due to ignorance, malnutrition, poor water and sanitation, and the failure of the
diagnosis and treatment process to protect their health. they were largely left with
only divine retribution as the dominant cause of their illness and the provision of
spiritual solace and the hope of a better afterlife when death approached. european
imperialism carried new diseases and death to much of the world, while the growth
of commerce and travel brought illness from ever more distant continents into the
european core to exact a similarly fatal toll. even with the growth of the national
quarantine system over the past millennium, and the emergence of intergovernmental
health conferences, regulations, and institutions and vast improvements in public
hygiene and sanitation in the second half of the 19th century, many still died as the
20th century began. the great influenza pandemic at the end of world war I killed an
estimated 50 million around the world, taking more lives than those killed deliberately
during the world's most deadly war to date (Soper 1919; Harrison 2006).
the 20th century promised a much brighter and healthier future in so many
ways. It brought advances in medicine, hygiene, education, sanitation, and public
health. these came with the professionalisation of health practitioners, the creation
of pharmaceutical firms of national and then international reach, and the advent of
philanthropic nongovernmental organisations (nGos), such as the rockefeller
Foundation, devoted to research to alleviate humanity's suffering. at the end of
World War II the victorious powers created the World Health Organization (wHo)
to produce health for all and assist the new states freed from colonialisation as they
constructed their governments to provide their citizens with better health (Goodman
1971). as with earlier imperial ventures and world wars, the cold war and periodic
hot wars that followed also spurred innovation, for the imperial powers acquired
