Topic: Stopping the Spread of Disease Across International Borders
Country: Mongolia
Delegate Name: Hannah Thomas
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Mongolia position papers GLIMUN 2012 committees
The issue of spreading diseases and pandemics is complicated and will not be easily solved. There are many solutions that could be implemented that would be effective but impractical such as quarantines and health screenings at border check points.
This is a difficult situation especially for developing nations. Closing borders for quarantines and screening those passing through borders would have negative effects. Both of these solutions require a great deal of money and resources that aren't readily available to much of the developing world. In Mongolia there are about 1,650,000 passengers and 780,000 transportation vehicles passing the border checkpoints annually from over one hundred different countries. We have about forty four border check points but almost 13 of them are not currently in service due to poor infrastructure and working conditions.
Mongolia, while improving the health of our citizens drastically in the past years, still has struggles in controlling outbreaks. Due to our large herding population diseases such as the avian influenza easily became pandemics, and we still have the seventh highest burden of tuberculosis (TB) in the Western Pacific Region. We've introduced immunizations for measles-mumps-rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, and neonatal tetanus and seen a drastic decrease in those diseases.
Mongolia believes as a nation that the best solution to stopping the spread of diseases across borders is to stop them at the source. This means that developing countries must have more easily accessible health care, which includes hospitals and immunizations to stop the spread of disease within the countries first and foremost.
