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The challenges facing the international public health’s concern improving networks and methods of identifying, tracking, and responding to the emergence of new diseases. Building an effective, integrated web of global public health services to serve these needs is, of course, itself a kind of globalization.
Technology also drives much of the globalization phenomena. Technological developments, from increased travel to better communication abilities and the development of new crops that can improve nutrition, are also partially responsible for driving changes in global health indicators. These forces not only present new risks for the transmission of disease, but also contain the possibility for improving millions of lives.
The question for the future will be whether these challenges are met, raising all the world’s people to the health standards of those in wealthy countries,—or whether infectious disease will prove too much for these systems, and lead to increasingly severe pandemics that may affect rich and poor countries alike.
Genetically Modified Organisms
A final issue that is very important to global public health is the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMO’s). Scientists, working with farmers, have found ways to unlock the genetic codes of many plants and animals for the sake of improving these organisms. These changes may involve making them more resistant to parasites, making them grow faster, or yield higher quantities of protein. However, this practice has also generated fierce controversy, raising concerns about the ethics of tampering with life as well as health concerns.
To learn more about this debate, please continue reading our section on GMO’s.
Global Diseases
Throughout this issue brief, a number of diseases have been mentioned several times. HIV/AIDS, TB, cholera and malaria are among the most serious diseases that the world faces, causing millions illnesses and deaths each year. To learn more about these individual diseases, please continue reading the following sections: