Health and Communicable Disease— Protecting Life in the Global Commons 419with but a few cases reported. In 2010, when it was revealed that the U.S. Central Intel-
ligence Agency had been using health workers administering inoculations to take
blood samples to locate Osama bin Laden via DNA analy sis, many health workers
came under attack. Polio resurged in Af ghan i stan, Pakistan, and later Syria because
of civil war disruptions. Since then, the availability of more effective vaccines and new
emergency inoculation initiatives has brought the number of new cases to nearly zero.
But some public health officials have criticized the practice of targeting specific dis-
eases on grounds that funds might be better used to improve public health systems
more generally.
No one doubts, however, that one of the tasks of state and international authorities is
to report quickly and honestly on the outbreaks of transmissible diseases. Twenty- first-
century mobility has posed major prob lems for containing these outbreaks as individu-
als and communities become vulnerable to disease through migration, refugees, air and
truck transport, trade, and troop movements. The importance of these responsibili-
ties became all the more apparent in the SARS outbreak of 2002–03. China initially
suppressed information, was slow to permit WHO officials to visit affected areas, and
As a result of globalization, goods and ser vices are not the only items traded around the world
more quickly than ever before; communicable diseases too can spread rapidly, as humans hop
airplanes to distant destinations more and more frequently. Here, passengers at Mohammed V
International Airport in Casablanca, Morocco, are checked for pos si ble signs of Ebola during
the outbreak in West Africa.