Global Health Security: Recognizing Vulnerabilities, Creating Opportunities

With our highly connected and interdependent world, the growing threat of infectious diseases and public health crisis has shed light on the requirement for global efforts to manage and combat highly pathogenic infectious diseases and other public health crisis on an unprecedented level. Such disease threats transcend borders. Reducing global threats posed by infectious disease outbreaks – whether naturally caused or resulting from a deliberate or accidental release – requires efforts that cross the disaster management pillars: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

This book addresses the issues of global health security along 4 themes: Emerging Threats; Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery; Exploring the Technology Landscape for Solutions; Leadership and Partnership. The authors of this volume highlight many of the challenges that confront our global security environment today. These range from politically induced disasters, to food insecurity, to zoonosis and terrorism. More optimistically, the authors also present some advances in technology that can help us combat these threats. Understanding the challenges that confront us and the tools we have to overcome them will allow us to face our future with confidence.

Anthony Masys is an Associate Professor and Director of Global Disaster Management, Humanitarian Assistance and Homeland Security.  A former senior Air Force Officer, Dr Masys has a BSc in Physics and MSc in Underwater Acoustics and Oceanography from the Royal Military College of Canada and a PhD from the University of Leicester. He is Editor in Chief for Springer Publishing book series: Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications and holds various advisory board positions with academic journals and books series.

He is an internationally recognized author, speaker and facilitator and has held workshops on security, visual thinking, design thinking and systems thinking in Europe, Canada, South America, West Africa and Asia. He has published extensively in the domains of physics and the social sciences. His recent books include:

·         Opening the Black Box of Human Error

·         Networks and Network Analysis for Defence and Security. Springer Publishing

·         Disaster Management- Enabling Resilience. Springer Publishing

·         Applications of Systems Thinking and Soft Operations Research for managing complexity. Springer Publishing

·         Exploring the Security Landscape- non-traditional security challenges. Springer Publishing.

·         Disaster Forensics: understanding root cause and complexity causality. Springer Publishing

·         Asia/Pacific Security challenges: managing black swans and persistent threats. Springer Publishing

·         Security by Design (in press)

Ricardo Izurieta received his MD from the Central University of Ecuador and after graduation, carried out his postdoctoral training in Public Health and Tropical Diseases. In 1991, he faced the cholera epidemic that spread through Latin American countries as National Director of the Cholera Control Program in the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador. In 1997, he was appointed Chief of the Department of Epidemiology and Director of The Vaccine Center of the Armed Forces of Ecuador. During his studies, he has been a USAID Thomas Jefferson Fellow, a PAHO Research Fellow, a Gorgas Memorial Institute Fellow, and a FUNDACYT Fellow. In 2003, he was elected Vice President of the Gorgas Memorial Institute of Tropical and Preventive Medicine. To date, he still holds this appointment. 

Ricardo Izurieta is currently the director of the Donald Price Parasitology Center.  In addition, he is a consultant for WASTE International from the Netherlands and for the Stockholm Environment Institute from Sweden.