Immediate Medical Help

International collaboration is needed for rapid prevention and containment of infectious diseases. Global health organizations should be able to coordinate and establish the responsive measures that should be taken by countries or regions when an outbreak of a disease occurs. National strategies to safeguard against the danger of a pandemic would be introduced and technical assistance would be provided when needed. Guidelines are set up by GIDOC for governments to address the situation through planning and conducting research on emerging diseases; greater monitoring, and full transparency in reporting cases.

Research and Planning

National emergency plans would be reviewed frequently and regularly in order to assimilate new scientific knowledge in this fast-moving field. Countries should be ready to respond to a potential pandemic. When there are outbreaks of infectious diseases, countries should be able to take appropriate actions promptly to avoid the spreading of the diseases.

Training

A competent health workforce is needed for a global health system to function effectively. The supply, capacity and distribution of the present health workforce have to be improved greatly.
      The growth and better performance of health workforces in developing countries should be supported by mobilizing adequate financial resources and providing technical support.
  The health workforce should be well-trained in handling different cases and they should observe universal precautions from infection strictly.

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Transparency

Countries should be encouraged to report any information concerning diseases detected immediately and clearly so that sufficient resources can be allocated. Other countries could then obtain information and set up measures to prevent the outbreak in their regions.

Improving International Co-operation

Signing of Treaty

As the saying goes, no man is an island. No one could ever survive alone. The same applies to a country. Every single country on the world map is inter-related in the sense that one would affect another and vice versa. For instance the US imports garments from Hong Kong while Japan exports cars to China. Without international trade, comparative advantage could not exist, the absence of which would only do both involved parties harm. Nowadays, multi-point production is getting more prevalent and an increasing number of transnational corporations are being set up. For example, the headquarters of a company is located in an international city while production sites are set up in other lower-labor cost regions. These all exemplify international cooperation. However, why is such kind of mutually beneficial cooperation constrained to trade only, but cannot be applied to combating infectious diseases together?

To put the above ideas into practical implementation, signing of a treaty is proposed which aims at promoting international cooperation in dealing with global infectious diseases together as a united party. The following will be stated in the treaty:

Each allied country is required to accomplish mandatory goals which are set according to its own country's conditions but the goals can generally be divided into two standards: standard for less developed countries and standard for more developed countries. Certainly the goals are related to health management and control of infectious diseases. For example, health education regarding AIDS transmission and safety measures against Avian Influenza has to be practiced among citizens, medical supplies have to be sufficiently in stock all the time, regular documents reporting local health situations have to be submitted to GIDOC. In times of disease outbreak, each country should announce the news immediately and GIDOC would coordinate the situation and allocate help from other member countries if the involved country needs any.

In addition, each member country would be evaluated to see if she is capable of providing financial help to other developing countries. This measure is in line with the main purpose of the treaty: To promote international cooperation. The assisted countries could in turn offer other benefits to the assisting countries; say for example, lower tax payment could be offered. In fact GIDOC is the facilitator which helps both parties to reach a mutually beneficial compromise.

Installation of Mentoring Scheme

A mentoring scheme would be developed to help developing countries in improving their healthcare situation. It might be difficult to be carried out as more developed countries tend to focus on the welfare of themselves rather than that of others, they could not visualize the fact that infectious diseases like AIDS are highly contagious or they simply might have belittled the transmittable power of infectious diseases. Measures taken like reinforcing custom checks while ignoring the needs of others reveal the misconception that their country can indeed be an island. How to eradicate such selfish thoughts and infuse the importance of international co-operation into the minds of these people? GIDOC would be responsible to take the initiative to call upon the attention of the world on the seriousness of the disease and effectually convince them the need of international co-operation. In fact, the situation is exactly the same as that of global warming. It's futile for one country to use renewable energy while another country uses petrol. In other words, is it better to have an AIDS-free world or one part of the world being healthy while having one person killed by AIDS every 2 seconds in another part?