The Social and Political Context of Disease Outbreaks: The Case of SARS in Toronto

Abstract

We adopt a political ecology framework to delineate a critical and systemic model that explains how an emerging infectious disease (EID), such as SARS, is dealt with in our globalized world. It is our hope that such a model will contribute to the development of more realistic risk-management policies. First, we focus on identifying and analyzing particular social and human-environment interactions that facilitated the spread of SARS within a local Toronto context. Second, we describe how the SARS outbreak brought to light the deeply rooted inadequacies involved in the current system of global health governance. We stress that in our globalized world it is unwise to focus too narrowly on the local context. The analysis of disease outbreaks must adopt a global perspective that considers the political ecological nature of the relationships between the developed and developing world.