The ‘Other’ face of health security: Reimagining epistemic attachments in global health

The 'health security' paradigm has reshaped global health since Covid-19, framing infectious diseases as existential threats and targeting marginalised populations as risky 'others' to surveil and contain. However, its exclusionary consequences for those 'othered' remain underexamined, particularly from the perspective of lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic and archival case studies in Lebanon, Nepal, Serbia, and Syria (2021-2025), we examine health security's 'other' face, the systematic exclusion of migrant, rural, and displaced populations from protection, ranging from vaccine apartheid to medicalised border controls. We argue that these are not abstract harms but embodied burdens, and that ethnographic perspectives are essential to reveal them. Rejecting the premise that securitisation as the only available logic, we propose five cooperative mechanisms, including demilitarised financing, a binding vaccine convention, and data sovereignty, to shift global health toward equity and care. The question is not whether we can imagine different futures, but whether we have the courage to build them.