The Yata Mirror

The G7 Ise-Shima Vision for Global Health is a joint declaration released on May 27, 2016, by the seven world leaders during the G7 Summit, held in the Shima Peninsula in Japan. Two important issues have been raised by the declaration.

The first important point concerns the emphasis put on an integrated biodefense approach. Ultimately, this approach is based on the idea of combining military, security and public health efforts creating a unified field of competence and governance to contrast biological threats from different sources, including bioterrorism, biological incidents, and naturally occurring outbreaks. Still more important, the document identifies two main funding mechanisms, 1) the Contingency Fund for Emergency (CFE), which is  a specific, replenishable, funding mechanism created in May 2015 by the WHO, which has been now fully endorsed also by the G7 Summit; and 2) a new instrument just developed by the World Bank,  the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF), which offers financial coverage in the event of an outbreak to low income countries and to qualified international agencies. The PEF covers outbreaks of infectious diseases, including new Orthomyxoviruses (new influenza pandemic virus A, B and C), Coronaviridae (SARS, MERS), Filoviridae (Ebola, Marburg) and other zoonotic diseases (Crimean Congo, Rift Valley, Lassa fever). 

A second important point addressed by the Ise-Shima Declaration concerns Antimicrobial Resistance and the “One Health Approach”. The document endorses the "One Health Approach" in human and animal health, agriculture food and the environment, and call for an integrated collaboration between G7 ministries of health, environment, and agriculture. In addition, the document solemnly declares the "effectiveness of antimicrobials as a global public good and prioritize efforts to preserving such effectiveness through appropriate and prudent use of antimicrobials both in humans and animals".  The United Nations usually considers  clean water, safe environment, peace, economic stability, etc. as global public goods. Adding to this list  the " effectiveness of antimicrobials" is an important policy decision, which promises to have significant future  impacts (one of them is already evident from the Ise-Shima Declaration, which formally bans the use of antibiotics for growth promotion in animal husbandry and preserve the use of antibiotics only for therapeutic reasons in human and veterinary medicine). 

So, is everything ok with the Ise-Shima Declaration? Almost.

The Shima Peninsula, which hosted the G7 Summit, is famous for housing one of Shinto's holiest sites, the Ise Grand Shrine.  In the restricted part of the sanctuary – the sancta sanctorum – there is a sacred mirror (Yata no Kagami), which is believed to represent the Truth. The Mirror was given directly to the Emperor from Amaterasu, the Maiden of the Sun. The legends tells that the Goddess was once involved in a fight with her brother, the God of the sea and storms, Susanowo. At the end of the combat,Amaterasu, angry, hid herself in a cavern, leaving the world in the dark. Other Gods played then a pantomime with dancers  to appease her, putting a mirror at the entrance of the cavern to allow the Goddess to see the show from inside.  Not onlyAmaterasu saw the show, amusing herself, but she also saw her splendid beauty reflected by the mirror. So the Yata Mirror saved the world from darkness, because the Goddess returned outside. Finally, the Mirror was given to the Emperor. For more than one thousand and seven-hundred years (the mirror dates back to the 3rd Century), only the Emperor and the sanctuary priests were allowed accessing it. On the reverse of the mirror, there  was  a secret inscription used for centuries as a seal of enthronement for newly appointed Emperors of Japan. Only after World War II, it became possible to study this inscription, which was amazingly made of 37 letters of Brahmi, Hebrew and early Japanese script. They include the Hebrew name of G-d,  the Chinese Yang symbol,  the early Hindu symbol for Aum, and a mysterious inscription, maybe in Latin letters and Arabic numbers.

Truth, light, mirror, power, secrecy, God: could one find a deeper, and nicer, symbol, to describe the countless nuances of human communication? Yet, communicational aspects are totally missed in the Ise-Shima Declaration and this is - at least to me – it's main fault.  It's really a damage, because most issues raised by the document would make still more sense if they were framed within a wider context, also including public health and risk communication. Might Amaterasu, the Goddess of light, enlightens our rulers and teach them that each profitable human enterprise starts with good communication.