From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY HEALTH RISKScollaboration, dedicated to attracting and disbursing funds to fightthe three diseases, is discussed in more detail in Part 5.AIDS is unlikely to remain the only major pandemic of our lifetimes.Already, tuberculosis is a neglected disease that killed 1.6 millionpeople in 2005, 195,000 of them people living with HIV. 62 With theadvent of multi-drug-resistant TB, tackling the disease has becomeharder than it was 60 years ago. Avian flu, which emerged in South-East Asia in 2003, is currently the most likely candidate to join it. As ofJanuary 2008, 353 cases had been reported worldwide, with 227deaths, 63 and if the rapidly mutating virus acquires the ability to passdirectly from human to human, statistical analyses project a deathcount of 62 million, based on the 1918 influenza pandemic. Ninetysixper cent of deaths are forecast to be in the developing world. 64Viruses respect no borders, and tackling pandemics requiresco-ordinated international action. In health, this has achieved somespectacular successes, such as the eradication of smallpox and thecontrol of the SARS outbreak of 2003 (see Box 4.3).BOX 4.3SARS: WHAT GLOBAL COLLABORATION CAN ACHIEVEThere is a startling contrast between the prompt and effectiveglobal response to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),and the years of neglect over HIV and AIDS. The World HealthOrganization’s Global Alert Response system is a surveillancesystem that continually tracks the outbreak of emergingpotential health epidemics around the world. SARS was onesuch threat, first identified on 12 March 2003.Unprecedented global collaboration was the key to thecontainment of this deadly new disease. Initially, internationaland national teams on the ground provided information on it,which was quickly disseminated globally, allowing rapididentification of imported cases and thus the containment ofthe outbreak. WHO went onto something approaching a warfooting, receiving daily updates on the situation in countries withoutbreaks and demanding the immediate reporting of casesdetected in all other countries. Operational teams provided237