Trust Across Borders: Responding to 2009 H1N1 Influenza in the Middle East

Abstract

Disease surveillance networks in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa are models for the kind of transnational cooperation that can mount the needed flexible and coordinated response to the spread of 2009 H1N1 influenza and future pandemic threats. For example, members of the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS), a regional disease surveillance network of public health experts and ministry of health officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan, have coordinated the screening, laboratory testing, and risk communication strategies to detect and control 2009 H1N1 influenza. This coordination is made possible by trust and by well-exercised national and regional pandemic preparedness policies. The consortium illustrates the value of regional disease surveillance networks in shaping and managing cohesive policies on current and future threats. The MECIDS alliance partnership also exemplifies to other parts of the world that are experiencing conflict-like South Asia-that finding common ground is imperative to promoting health security and cooperation where it is most lacking and needed and that developing cohesive infectious disease control policies can build trust across the most difficult boundaries in the world. This article provides an overview of the history of MECIDS and similar networks and of the MECIDS response to 2009 H1N1 influenza.