A cure for the Asian flu.

IN THE PERPETUALLY RESOURCE-STARVED environment of public health, where each disease or risk factor has to fight for a scrap of the federal budget, it is easy to forget how fast progress can be made when appropriate policy attention and resources are marshaled to solve a problem. The natural response of public health professionals to the starvation diet is to maintain low expectations. But those who see the global importance of dealing with current health threats and preparing for future ones should demand a seat at the table and argue for a full plate. To do this, draw inspiration from the Asian flu. No, in this case I do not mean the H5N1 avian influenza, the human form of which may be emerging somewhere in Asia. I mean the so-called Asian flu of 1997, in which the economies of Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries in Asia came very close to being destroyed by a financial crisis of immense proportions. Economists and market watchers called this the Asian flu because they feared, as is always the case during financial crisis, that because of the global nature of capital and the quick movement of traders’ panic from one market to the next, the crisis in Asia would quickly spread to Japan, then to the U.S. and Europe. Using a term borrowed without acknowledgment from public health, this is the “financial contagion” feared by the leaders of the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Treasury, and other institutions. What we can learn from that Asian flu, and from international responses to the financial crises in Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and elsewhere, is that for some types of global threats, wealthy countries and international institutions have the motivation, the mechanisms, and the money to mitigate the risk—precisely what they have not yet mustered for the health threats on the horizon. UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL CONNECTIONS