Linked Comment: Wiwanitkit. Int J Clin Pract 2014; 68: 283. The vast amount of information waiting to be unveiled about the newly emerging H7N9 influenza virus promises to fill important knowledge gaps, some of them pertaining to the virus, others to global public health in general. As insightfully pointed out 1, international collaborative efforts led by multi-disciplinary teams assume key roles during these efforts. The far-reaching implications of these initiatives should more frequently become the focus of in-depth analyses bridging infectious diseases, global health and public policy. Social and political leadership emerge as particularly powerful components of these international, multi-disciplinary endeavours. The worldwide eradication of smallpox could not have succeeded without sustained, long-term political will 2, 3. Lessons from that success are mirrored by the negotiation and implementation, in more recent years, of cease-fires and ‘Days of Tranquility’ that enabled vaccination campaigns to proceed in conflict-torn areas, usually with assistance from international organisations 4-9. One of the key obstacles in eradicating polio and other infectious diseases is militarised violence 10. With over 150 major conflicts that have been described in developing countries since the end of World War II, and given the ability of war-affected regions to contribute to the re-introduction of pathogens into geographical areas from where they had been previously eradicated 11, we can hope that these strides are paving the way towards the worldwide eradication of several preventable infectious diseases. The SARS outbreak provided another key teaching about the cardinal role of international cooperation. In China, the initial delay in reporting the infection made the identification of contacts more challenging, and required broader quarantine measures, even though well-coordinated initiatives subsequently controlled the outbreak 12, 13. This contrasts the prompt response from Vietnam, which became, as a result of immediate patient isolation measures and early nosocomial infection control, the first country to successfully and effectively control the spread of the virus, demonstrating the value of early reporting and international transparency 14-16. The far-reaching impact of political leadership on infectious diseases was again put to the test in 2003, when campaigns to ban polio immunisation in Northern Nigeria, justified by the belief that vaccines could be contaminated with infertility drugs or HIV, unleashed outbreaks that spread to over 20 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. These accounted for approximately 80% of the world's paralytic polio cases 17. As a result, polio emerged in several African countries that previously had been declared polio-free, delaying the much-anticipated global eradication of the disease 17, 18. The resumption of the vaccination campaigns is credited to a timely and concerted international intervention that involved the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the United Nations and the United States government 17, 19. These examples portray the powerful impact that political leadership exerts, at multiple levels, on infection control. Concomitantly, the burden of infectious diseases is increasingly connected to poverty, social disintegration and political destabilisation, illustrating a complex, multi-layered and bidirectional relationship 20-22. What makes this interface become even more significant is that infectious diseases, perhaps to a greater extent than many other health conditions, are strategically more powerfully positioned with respect to the benefits of international collaborative efforts and, also, with regard to the potential implications of their ineffectiveness. None.