PerspectiveThe Presidential Candidates Are Ignoring One of the World’s Biggest Looming Threats

Whoever sits in the Oval Office come January 2021, he or she will almost inevitably have to address pandemic disease as a foreign-policy issue. From AIDS and malaria to Ebola and pandemic flu, every president in recent decades has been faced with an international infectious disease outbreak that demanded both the attention of U.S. diplomats and officials and financing from U.S. budgets. Yet, to varying degrees, each administration has been caught unprepared. So far, the current set of presidential candidates does not seem more promising on this front.

Andreas Fulda writes in Foreign Policy that the well-being of Americans in today’s globalized world is inextricably linked to that of people around the globe, while the effects of pandemics are born disproportionately by the least powerful. The next U.S. president needs a proactive strategic initiative, based in global solidarity, to address today’s pandemics, tomorrow’s outbreaks, and the health impacts of climate change.

Fulda adds:

U.S. presidents have a particularly powerful role when it comes to diseases that cross international borders. Barack Obama was initially criticized for a slow response to Ebola in West Africa, yet his decision to shift to a whole-of-government response and his address to the United Nations General Assembly meeting on Ebola were political watersheds that helped build the response that eventually ended the outbreak. Ronald Reagan’s failure to address HIV contributed to the pandemic we have today, and George W. Bush launched one of the most effective health aid programs in history with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Even in a presidential campaign that has so far largely avoided foreign policy, the lack of attention to pandemics is notable. None of the leading campaigns (of either party) has come out with a foreign-policy approach that addresses global health. This is notable because pandemics are at the heart of the key issues that the Democratic candidates have focused on—pandemic disease burden makes economic inequality worse, not just by killing but by bankrupting families; LGBT people around the world are still disproportionately affected by pandemic diseases, including HIV; and the effects of climate change are felt in part through deaths from disease. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has regularly proposed deep cuts to pandemic-related global health programs and has faced pushback from activists, public health leaders, and Congress.

The world needs more from the United States than, at best, avoidance of the issue and, at worst, the slashing of effective efforts.