Global Health Risks and Cosmopolitisation: from Emergence to Interference

Fear, duty and the moralities of care: The Ebola 2014 threat

“…The 2014 Ebola threat raises significant questions about the geopolitical context and the implications for professional sense of duty and care (Godderis and Rossiter, 2013). Infectious diseases threats such as Ebola bring to the surface the precariousness of an increasingly globalised environment, bringing with them relations of possibility, opportunity, dread and degraded political power and jurisdictional autonomy (Figuié, 2013; Furedi, 2005; Schillmeier, 2008). Ebola, even as a threat that has not materialised in Australia, highlights how professional benevolence and duty are individually and collectively negotiated, and in turn inflected by relations within an organisation and with government health authorities.…”

“…It is important to consider the sociocultural context within which we embark on this analysis of the Ebola threat. Scholars have argued that, globally we have entered a ‘climate of fear’ (Altheide, 2006), cascading ‘ontological insecurity’ (Giddens, 1991) or preoccupation with ‘global anticipated uncertainties’ (Beck, 1992; see also Figuié, 2013). These scholars argue that the advance of globalisation has had both negative and positive consequences: the unravelling of certainty about one’s place in the world has allowed increased freedom of identity, yet these freedoms are unevenly distributed, and often entail greater sense of risk for the individual (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002).…”

“…An important recognition is that risks like Ebola have constructed elements (Beck, 2009; Figuié, 2013) and are prone to practices of dramatisation, minimisation, transformation and even denial (Beck, 2009: 30). In this sense, the 2014 Ebola threat is a complex assemblage of histories, economies and current forms of (global) social order, and emerges from the existing cultural milieu of uncertainty and mistrust in authority.…”

A One-Step RT-PCR Array for Detection and Differentiation of Zoonotic Influenza Viruses H5N1, H9N2, and H1N1

“…Fortunately, most zoonotic influenza infections in humans are not readily transmissible to other humans. However, should a particular zoonotic strain gain human‐to‐human transmissibility, an influenza pandemic of zoonotic origin could be much more virulent, due to a lack of immunity to the novel influenza virus in the general population .…”