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Global Health Expert Cites Economic Costs of Infectious Diseases
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| Thomas Quinn |
WASHINGTON, February 5, 2007 � All it takes is one person to spread an epidemic. And the outcome could be catastrophic not only on a country’s public health system but also to their economy, according to Dr. Thomas Quinn, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health.
During a presentation to the International Reporting Project (IRP) Fellows and SAIS community, Quinn highlighted the high economic toll infectious diseases can have on local economies, and even the global economy.
He pointed to the example of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), a highly contagious respiratory disease that drew headlines after killing more than 700 people worldwide in 2003. Quinn explained that the virus emerged when an individual from Guangdong Province in China came into contact with several people at a Hong Kong hotel where more than a dozen people later became infected. The following month, that number rose to more than 500 infected persons in seven countries. Within eight months, the World Health Organization had tallied more than 8,000 cases from Asia to North America, including the United States.
“I happened to be in Canada when this hit…. and I could barely get out the country,” Quinn recalled of the strict measures that were enacted during the height of the epidemic. “It was this ripple effect of this brand new disease. We didn’t know what was causing it…and it just went on and on creating fear, quarantine, and a number of other issues.”
Effective health practices eventually brought the epidemic under control, but Quinn said the disease took a profound economic toll on many of the affected countries. Canada lost up to $30 million per day, while Asian economies sustained up to $30 billion in financial losses throughout the duration of the health crisis, which limited tourism and air travel. Quinn said that if “SARS is a snapshot of what one communicable disease can do, AIDS is actually the full-painted canvas.”
Quinn said the massive spread of HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa, has led to several disturbing trends. High morbidity and mortality rates have substantially lowered life expectancy in many African countries. In Sierra Leone, life expectancy has dropped to 37 years. As more people die at a younger age, the workforce becomes smaller and productivity lower, which in turn threatens to undermine many borderline African economies. Quinn called this phenomenon as a syndemic, in which poverty and AIDS are both the cause and effect of one another.
“The two reinforce one another because poverty is the driver for the spread of AIDS and as more people die from AIDS, it creates more poverty,” Quinn said of the virus that has killed an estimated 30 million people.
While many global health economists remain focused on HIV/AIDS, Quinn cautioned about the emergence of other new diseases, which can be easily spread in today’s globalized society. While it is difficult not to be alarmist when an epidemic breaks out, Quinn says it is critical that the press educate the public about the nature of a disease and its evolution.
“The press has been great about picking up on these [infectious diseases] when they occur,” Quinn told the IRP Fellows. “But then they sort of don’t cover it after it’s gone and yet it’s not totally gone. It still may exist in some area of the word but it is not affecting the US population. If I could advocate for something, it would be to have a broader concept of these diseases.”
Copyright © 2007 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.