Genetic matrix of the doctrine of Pan-American health

The triad of quarantines, neo-hygienism, and securitization in SARS-CoV-2

Gonzalo Basile¹

The generalization and normalization of empirical quarantines, (neo)hygienism with medical policing in national territories, and global securitization are key elements for understanding the new nexus between security and health in the incidence of Covid-19, assuming that too many public health problems are now framed within the narrative of global health security and national security. It is important to study the implications of this expansive movement and ask whether it is merely a concept for limiting the cross-border spread of infectious diseases and what risks it poses by normalizing these security interventions in the field of public health.

The international and regional SARS-CoV-2 epidemiological crisis fully activated a set of mechanisms embedded in the genetic matrix of Pan-American health policies in Latin America and the Caribbean: both in its biomedicalized and public health approaches, and also in a progressive 20th-century medical-social perspective that shaped several generations of Latin American and Caribbean public health professionals. This article seeks to review the triad of concepts currently operationalized in the global and regional context of the response to the Covid-19 epidemic risk and to analyze and reflect on the assumptions made by quarantines (now anti-Covid), secondly, public (neo)hygienism, and finally, the implementation of global health securitization as a fundamental premise of liberal global health.

1- FLACSO Dominican Republic International Health Program / CLACSO International Health and Health Sovereignty Working Group Coordinator

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