Global Situations
Diseases
The past decade has seen the rise of new diseases and the reemergence of many economically important livestock diseases worldwide. Expansion of global trade, rapid transport facilities, increase in population of both humans and animals, free movement of animals and animal products, environmental changes, and greater exposure to wildlife have all contributed to the emergence and reemergence of animal diseases.
International Relations
For a long time, the discipline of international relations (IR) has dominated the way people thought about world political events, emphasizing particularly activities like diplomacy, war, peace, strategic alliances, and economic exchanges. It is for this reason that when we think about IR, certain images recur. Statesmen negotiating high-level treaties with each other. The mushroom cloud. Soldiers fighting each other in jungles and ruined urban areas. Pictures of dictators defying the “international community.” Political leaders discussing crisis situations in emergency meetings. While there may be many more images similar to these, IR is now becoming increasingly recognized as a contested field of thought. This is largely due to the fact that it has been extremely selective about what it chooses to study and is oblivious to the consequences of its actions. Consider this. As a result of the end of the Cold War, numerous African states have descended into ethnic chaos, leading to the exodus of thousands of refugees. Globalization may have transformed the way states trade with each other but has also led to a tremendous amount of inequity, giving rise to sizeable numbers of sweatshop workers in the Third World. Both groups of people — refugees and sweatshop workers — have a huge role in international politics but because of their marginalized status, they continue to be either ignored or misrepresented through the lens of IR
Prices of most agricultural food commodities have risen sharply during the past two years. Several factors have contributed to this development
(1) low levels of world stocks (especially for wheat and maize) following two years of below-average harvests in Europe in 2006 and 2007;
(2) crop failures in major producing countries like Australia in 2006 and 2007;
(3) rapidly growing demand for grain-based biofuel production supported by subsidies;
(4) gradual changes in agricultural policies of the OECD countries, where reduced levels of subsidies have led to lower surplus production;
(5) strong economic growth in developing countries and expanding world population. In addition, agricultural markets are becoming increasingly intertwined with non-agricultural markets (energy, manufacturing, finance, etc.). Climate change and resource constraints (water supply in particular) are also influencing overall food supply and demand.
Natural Disasters
The number of natural disasters and the severity of their impact have increased in recent decades. These developments highlight the need for improved preparedness and response in the health sector, inter alia, and the important role of public health in disaster management. The purpose of this paper, which is based on a literature review, is to provide background information about the general framework of disaster management and present the core concepts of disaster preparedness and response in health systems. Three different strategies were used to collect information for this article. First, information was collected from various international databases. Then, the virtual health library for disasters provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WHO Health Action in Crisis (HAC) online sources were reviewed for relevant WHO and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) books, working papers and reports. Finally, PubMed abstracts were searched with key words and phrases. For greater completeness, five disaster journals were hand searched. Additional sources such as text books, working papers, and articles were included, relying on the bibliography of the original study mentioned in the introduction to this paper. The studies reviewed indicated that fragmented and response-oriented approaches have begun to change world wide, at least in the literature. Despite the publication of increasing numbers of research projects in disaster issues, there are still gaps in sharing experience through scientific papers, such as systematic evaluation of activities in different phases of disaster situations.