This historical project aims to investigate the global health emergency of antimicrobial resistance within the diplomatic and political activities of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The project’s central hypothesis suggests that major global sanitary emergencies such as epidemics, endemics, and pandemics are the effect of both disrupted environmental equilibria and increasing diplomatic tensions as well as the resulting lack of international sanitary coordination. The project is framed within the global coordinating sanitary activities of the WHO, and the food production activities of the FAO, which are used both to control the manufacturing and use of antibiotics as well as the epidemiological surveillance of antibiotic resistance. These activities represent a sensitive matter for both economic development and the national security of members states of UN agencies.
This project is hosted by the Lise Meitner Research Group to further and refine arguments related to the changing geopolitical role of Chinese scientific and technological development.
First World Health Assembly, Geneva, 1948. Members of the Chinese delegation. Source: WHO Library, Geneva.