In view of their influence, international health agencies have a particular responsibility to ensure their policies are well-grounded in data and objective analysis. Moreover, governments have a responsibility to take the time, and effort, to ensure that their populations are well-served. It is hoped that the evaluation in the REPPARE report Rational Policy Over Panic presented with this article will contribute to this effort.
An Awkward Problem The world of international public health is in a precarious position.
Public health policy must always address threats in context.
This is why public health agencies must consider all aspects of direct cost, opportunity cost, and risk when formulating policy.
To ignore wider considerations in global public health and the evidence that informs those considerations would require abandonment of basic principles and ethics.
Crucially, actual mortality from these acute outbreaks has remained low for a century in contrast to other current health burdens.
The evidence, assessed objectively, paints a picture of an increasing ability to identify and report outbreaks up to the decade 2000 to 2010, followed by a reduction in burden consistent with an increasing ability to successfully address these relatively low-burden events through current public health mechanisms.
Such an approach seems unlikely to address the needs of public health.
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