Conflict and the spread of emerging infectious diseases: Where do we go from here?

This article reports on conflict, peace support operations and spread of emerging infectious diseases as well as factors that potentiate emergence and transmission of infectious diseases in conflict situations and highlights several priority actions for their containment and control. Conflict is a complex system of clash or disagreement, often violent, between two opposing groups or individuals. Conflicts and wars have become a common place in the world, especially in Africa. So pervading are these conflicts and wars that African countries readily come to mind in any discourse on conflicts and wars any where in the world today. Infectious diseases continue to occur throughout the world, both sporadically and as outbreaks, because of multiple factors. Disease emergence is influenced by and environmental changes (e.g., agriculture, deforestation, droughts and floods), human demographics and behavior (e.g., population migration, urbanization, conflicts, international trade and travel), technology and industry, microbial adaptation and breakdown in public health measures. Conflict leaves populations in dire poverty, internally displaced or seeking asylum, having poor access to essential services and consequentially vulnerable to infectious diseases. Conflict situations present a multitude of risk factors that enhance disease emergence and transmission, over and above those in other resource-poor countries. The propensity for emerging infectious disease outbreaks to occur in conflict-affected countries and the need to monitor and respond more effectively to such events cannot be over-emphasized. Detection, containment and control of emerging infectious diseases in conflict situations are major challenges because of multiple risk factors that promote disease transmission and hinder control even more than those in many resource-poor settings. Beyond the global public health imperative to prevent the international spread of infectious diseases, there is also a moral imperative to alleviate the effects of these diseases on already vulnerable conflict-affected populations.