SARS, pandemic influenza and Ebola: The disease control styles of Britain and the United States

Some researchers claim that nation states have begun to conform to an internationally uniform response to infectious disease. A potential barrier to this development are the distinct systems of disease control that industrialized nation states have developed over long periods of time. I explain the divergent public policy responses of the United Kingdom and the United States to SARS, pandemic influenza and Ebola by taking a historical approach. I examine the different medical theories of disease that existed in Britain and America in the nineteenth century as each country began to develop its public health system. I also examine where in the state apparatus disease control was located in each country. In Britain disease control was historically part of the welfare sector of the state, while in the United States it was originally operated by the military. These different starting conditions helped push Britain and the United States along different paths of disease control and this helps explain why they respond to contemporary diseases in such different ways. The ‘historical durability’ national styles of disease may make it more difficult for the international community to enact a truly uniform response to pandemics.