The President and the Pandemic

Addressing the Young Global Leaders, Mexican President Felipe Calderón stated that when A/H1N1 (also known as swine flu) hit his country in 2009, 19 million people could have died. He based this estimate on the mortality rate of H5N1 (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza). A government’s response to emerging infectious diseases (EID) has a critical effect on the resulting death toll.

His words took me back to June 2010. I was in Mexico City then, interviewing multistakeholders (including academics, government officials, the private sector and non-governmental organizations) on lessons gleaned from A/H1N1 and on how global surveillance of EID can be improved. According to a foreign diplomat, early in the crisis, President Calderón’s advisers proposed two possible paths for Mexico to take. A then unknown virus was afflicting his people and the economy of his country. Should Mexico follow China’s approach or Canada’s? When Severe Accurate Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) hit China and Canada, each country reacted very differently: Canada opened up, whereas China demurred.

President Calderón could have gone either way. In choosing transparency, he paid a terrible price – an estimated 1% of Mexico’s GDP – when the global financial crisis would shave a further 5% from the GDP. The country’s GDP ultimately dropped a total of 6% in 2009. But the president’s choice was courageous and the right one for the sake of global public health.

In my research – sponsored by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency and published in 2011 by the Stanford Center for International Development – I found in the lessons learned and good practices that Mexico had chiefly chosen transparency and cooperated well, particularly with the United States and Canada. The country also showed acumen in managing its public and media relations effectively. Although an uneven economic development prevented the full dissemination of information across the more rural regions of Mexico, on a larger scale, public relations were handled relatively well.

Despite Mexico’s overall success in handling the crisis, there were myriad political weaknesses that hampered its efforts, problems which persist today. Loyalty to political groups is prized above competence. In addition, those individuals who are qualified for their positions are moved repeatedly or forced to leave when there is a change in government, causing the loss of valuable institutional knowledge and relationships. Such issues are hardly unique to Mexico. They are especially relevant to countries which are developing EID surveillance tools for the coming years.

In the end, we should be grateful that A/H1N1 turned out not to be as virulent as H5N1. We can be thankful that it occurred in Mexico where the country’s leadership could have taken a very different path, but chose wisely. Today, Mexico is in a stronger position with respect to EID surveillance and reporting, thanks to the leadership shown by President Calderón one fateful morning in 2009.

Sophal Ear, PhD, teaches post-conflict reconstruction and political economy at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California . He is a 2011 Young Global Leader and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His book, Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy, will be published by Columbia University Press in October 2012. The views expressed above are his alone.