Pandemics - Public Health Research Guide

The deadly spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases -especially in Africa, where the strain on public health authorities is at breaking point - underscores the critical need for an international regime of public health law. In addition, a growing awareness of the prevalence of non-communicable diseases, such as those caused by tobacco consumption, makes the necessity even more dramatic.

Modern technology offers new tools to better understand, track, and explain viral and bacterial spread in humans. In 2020, as COVID-19 overwhelmed governments and significant segments of the population and paralyzed many courts, we became painfully aware of the magnitude of risk carried around in tiny bacteria and viruses. COVID-19 has shown us that developing standards of care, treatments, and vaccines for emerging viruses and bacteria can take substantial time and resources. The rise in superbugs and drug-resistant bacteria, and the difficulty of treating these infections, have raised new questions about the balance between public health and global commerce. More than ever, practitioners need to think like scientists--following the facts and science to build a case. Like science, the law has not remained stagnant. Products, premises, and food outbreak liability law--all applicable to this type of litigation--have evolved through legislative acts, regulatory rulemaking, and the common law. This evolution has occurred parallel to the advances of science, purposeful or not. While COVID-19 changed the original scope of this book by broadening the areas of inquiry, the basic idea remains the same: science and the law seldom remains static. The emergence of widespread contagion litigation has underscored key developments in both science and law. COVID-19 has highlighted that disputes over outbreaks are not limited to tort litigation. The pandemic has also seen a rise in insurance, contract, and employment cases related to COVID-19. All of these types of litigation now face epidemic- and pandemic-related questions. This book provides guidance for the practitioner who is handling any type of outbreak litigation, from complex disputes arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic to smaller localized outbreaks that require special expertise.

Major influenza pandemics pose a constant threat. As evidenced by recent H5N1 avian flu and novel H1N1, influenza outbreaks can come in close succession, yet differ in their transmission and impact. With accelerated levels of commercial and population mobility, new forms of flu virus can also spread across the globe with unprecedented speed. Responding quickly and adequately to each outbreak becomes imperative on the part of governments and global public health organizations, but the difficulties of doing so are legion. One tool for pandemic planning is analysis of responses to past pandemics that provide insight into productive ways forward. This book investigates past influenza pandemics in light of today's, so as to afford critical insights into possible transmission patterns, experiences, mistakes, and interventions. It explores several pandemics over the past century, from the infamous 1918 Spanish Influenza, the avian flu epidemic of 2003, and the novel H1N1 pandemic of 2009, to lesser-known outbreaks such as the 1889-90 influenza pandemic and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968. Contributors to the volume examine cases from a wide range of disciplines, including history, sociology, epidemiology, virology, geography, and public health, identifying patterns that cut across pandemics in order to guide contemporary responses to infectious outbreaks.

International Law and Infectious Diseases is the first comprehensive analysis of the intersection between international law and infectious diseases. Infectious diseases pose a global threat, and international law plays an important but under-explored role in infectious disease control. Thebook analyses the globalization of public health; and it examines the history of international law in this area, the International Health Regulations, and international law on trade, human rights, armed conflict and arms control, and the environment. Fidler develops the concepts of microbialpolitikand global health jurisprudence to provide a political perspective and a framework for future legal action.The aim of this series of monographs is to publish important and original pieces of research on all aspects of public international law. Topics that are given particular prominence are those, which, while of interest to the academic lawyer, also have important bearing on issues which, touch theactual conduct of international relations. None the less the series is wide in scope and includes monographs on the history and philosophical foundations of international law.

There has been a considerable volume of commentary published in recent years on medical law. However it is increasingly apparent that a focus on individual medical treatments as an approach to the determination of health is inappropriate, and that health is determined as much by health policies as by medicine. The introduction of the dialogue of human rights into domestic law, along with recognition of the global nature of threats to health from disease, the environment and development, necessitate a broader approach to health law commentary.

Rated as a top 10 book about the COVID-19 pandemic by New Statesman: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2021/07/best-books-about-covid-19-pandemicEPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC- NDIt has been claimed that we are 'all in it together' and that the COVID-19 virus 'does not discriminate'.This accessible, yet authoritative book dispels this myth of COVID-19 as an 'equal opportunity' disease, by showing how the pandemic is a syndemic of disease and inequality. Drawing on international data and accounts, it argues that the pandemic is unequal in three ways: it has killed unequally, been experienced unequally and will impoverish unequally. These inequalities are a political choice: with governments effectively choosing who lives and who dies, we need to learn from COVID-19 quickly to prevent growing inequality and to reduce health inequalities in the future.COVID-19 is an unequal pandemic.