The politics and anti-politics of infectious disease control.

Infectious disease control has become an increasingly central component of development policy and practice. In 2000, the UN led Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets focused specifically on HIV and other infectious diseases as one dimension of increasing global equity and health. Infectious diseases have progressively become an issue articulated around global “security”, coupled with a heightened humanitarian urgency. The G8 summit of 2001 first articulated TB, HIV and Malaria as an economic and security problem for the more developed nations and requiring increased global investment. This re-articulation of the problem, and heightened interest has led to the development of a number of new funding mechanisms for these diseases, for example the Global Fund to fights AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM); the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR); and increasing private investment from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Bill Clinton Foundation etc. The focus on the “big three”, namely Malaria, TB and AIDS has also stimulated the development of the new category Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) to stimulate funding, research and control work on other infectious diseases. The billions of dollars thus invested have transformed the terrain of both infectious disease control and public health, fragmenting its approach, and stimulating the proliferation of organisations (non-governmental, humanitarian etc.) involved in dealing with them.