Shot Of Transparency, A

According to this article, while some countries such as Vietnam and more recently Indonesia, have become more open about sharing information about new disease outbreaks, and in particular avian influenza, most are reluctant to share such information. The reasons behind countries’ reluctance for full disclosure include the fear of losing poultry exports, local panic, a loss of tourist revenue and the desire to be the first to solve the puzzle of a new pandemic and be the first to publish.

This reluctance to share information on avian flu has caused some of the conflicting attitudes found among staff at international organisations like the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). For example, a senior adviser on communicable diseases at the WHO believes that a radical move toward openness may deter countries from sharing data altogether, while a member from the FAO insists that any benefits of hiding data would be short-lived.

Currently there are many groups and coalitions being formed which extol the virtues of openness and transparency. The Global Pandemic Initiative is a collaboration between the WHO and the United States Centres for Disease Control (CDC), together with IBM, a large computer firm and many other groups, which intends to develop software to help predict how diseases might spread, information that could help researchers in the rapid development of vaccines. Another group, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), a programme run by the Canadian government, searches public databases in seven languages looking for early signs of disease outbreak. In the future, this open database will be expanded to track newspapers and internet blogs in 40 to 100 languages.

According to the article, some critics denounce an open network model because it is based on press reports, and not verified scientific data. Open network supporters argue that press reports have the virtue of immediacy and can often persuade authorities to act more promptly. This proved to be the case during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, where the GPHIN sounded the alarm forcing the authorities to respond, making SARS “the pandemic that did not occur.”