Attribution of Infectious Disease Responsibility
In the case of the Zika epidemic, most of the literature on the attribution of infectious disease responsibility focused primarily on the cause, rather than the response, with most of the literature suggesting that globalization was responsible for the spread of Zika.
Although typically the blame of the origins of infectious diseases are typically placed on a cultural minority group (Hagan et al. 2015; Kobayashi et al. 2015; Phua 2015; World Health Organization 2017c), with response action emphasizing individual behavior, prevention of mosquito bites and sexual transmission (World Health Organization 2017d; Brym and Lie 2014), however, arguably, in the case of the Zika epidemic, considerable responsibility was given to the effects of globalization. Globalization has been defined in numerous ways. For example, Bryn and Lie (2014) defined it as the “rapid increases in the volume of international trade, travel, and communication [which has] broken down the isolation and independence of most countries and people” (pg. 27) (Imperato 2016). This interpretation of globalization will be used of the purposes of this review. According to the literature, the interconnectedness between countries through travel facilitated the spread of Zika beyond the Zika Forest of Uganda—where it was initially discovered in the 1940s—to South East Asia in the 1960s, the Island of Yap in 2007, French Polynesia in 2013, and South America in 2015 (Gyawali et al. 2016; Imperato 2016).
In addition to travel, other factors related to globalization, such as urbanization and human activities are also thought to have facilitated the spread of mosquito borne diseases, such as Zika. The global movement of humans and goods via international trade and the convenience of air travel have supported the ongoing spread of the Zika virus (World Health Organization 2017e). Analyses of the number of international travelers departing from Brazil and of the direction of spread of dengue and chikungunya suggest that Zika will continue to spread across South America into the Caribbean and the Southern USA (Gyawali et al. 2016).
In light of the profound influence of globalization, international human travel, climate change, and urbanization on the spread of the Zika virus, some of the literature has called for research that assesses the feasibility of a more global response to preventing spread.