During the past thirty years I have had the opportunity to work in countries where
infectious diseases regularly emerge, re-emerge and resurge; and globally, at the
World Health Organization, during a time when the world has begun to come to
grips with the public health risks that occur when these diseases spread
internationally in a globalized and interlinked world. As Professor Ann Marie
Kimball clearly demonstrates in her book Risky Trade: Infectious Disease in the Era
of Global Trade, microbes are resilient, and able to survive and multiply through
adaptation and natural selection. They also relentlessly find entry points to human
populations through weaknesses in public health or risky human behaviour; and
freely travel the world in humans, insects, food, animals and biological products.
At the same time, when microbes cross, or threaten to cross international borders,