Why should the United States care about health problems in distant, poor countries when there are pressing priorities here at home? It’s a classic question. People trying to influence policy have never trusted humanitarianism to carry the day and have instead appealed to the self-interest of U.S. citizens. When it comes to health, U.S. travelers heading to foreign lands for tourism or work need protection from disease or at least the promise of a cure when they return home. Of utmost concern, the military sends large numbers of troops where they are in danger not only from armed conflict, but also from exotic (and often dangerous) diseases.
But no tropical disease can make as clear a case for U.S. self-interest as antibiotic resistance can: witness the furor over NDM-1—the resistance gene that seems to have arisen in patients on the Indian subcontinent. Was the furor over a health problem in India and Pakistan? No. The news that hit U.S. and European newspapers was over the report about NDM-1 in Lancet Infectious Diseases that identified people in England who had had surgery in India—“medical tourists”—as victims, and warned that the UK National Health Service might suffer financially because patients coming home had to be hospitalized and treated with expensive antibiotics to cure their infections. These just as easily could have been Americans—and now they are: NDM-1 was found in three U.S. medical tourists (and one Japanese man) on their return from India.
