Global Public Health and Natural Disasters as Security Issue Complex

In the paper on the security issue complex of “Global Public Health and Natural Disasters”, the authors first introduce the specific security implications of each element of the security issue complex. Concerning global public health, via communicable diseases – like HIV/AIDS spreading since the late 1980s in southern Africa especially among the security forces and the younger population, or Ebola rampaging in western African countries like Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia during the year 2014 – in particular both national and human security are as routinely as significantly adversely affected. The very same can be assessed for natural disasters, with the importance of this relationship being most prominently highlighted by cases like the devastating earthquake in Haiti in the year 2010, which basically destroyed the entire country, or cyclone Nargis ravaging major parts of Burma/Myanmar in the year 2008. At the same time, it has also to be taken into account that there is an important “booster effect” which significantly affects the relationship between public health and natural disasters on the one hand and the security situation of various referent objects on the other. This “booster effect” describes the challenge that natural disasters commonly and significantly affect public health in a seriously adverse way, and at the same time large scale natural disasters seriously impair the affected state’s and the international community’s capacity to effectively respond to it, for instance by physically destroying infrastructure, means of transportation, and sites of medical supply and logistics, as well as by undermining public trust into administrative capacity and the state’s legitimacy.