Ten years on: generating innovative responses to avian influenza

Since 2006, the number of recorded H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks has declined globally, but at mid-2012 the disease was enzootic in six countries in Asia and Africa, and sporadic outbreaks continue over a wide area. It is now accepted that it will take decades to eliminate the H5N1 virus in poultry and 'unconventional' response approaches have been called for. Drawing on increased understandings of the epizoosis over the last 10 years, this paper investigates what conditions are required if such innovative approaches are to be generated. It argues that addressing the spread and persistence of avian influenza is primarily a political matter, and if approaches appropriate for enzooticity are to be devised, the social, political, and economic dynamics of the disease and responses to it need to be identified and prioritised. A dominant response strategy focused on outbreak events, containment and eradication has obscured these important dynamics. If innovative 'unconventional' responses are to be generated, a wider range of perspectives and expertise needs to be engaged. This will result in political processes of negotiation, which the technically led, development-orientated institutions directing and funding the global response are ill-equipped to facilitate.