Health Becomes the Hazard: Why Medical Risk is Now Operational Risk

It was not a cyberattack. It was not civil unrest. China's winter surge in respiratory illnesses in early 2025 served as a stark reminder that health is still a frontline risk for global operations teams.¹

The media were erroneously reporting the emergence of a new virus, with rumors spreading through social media that healthcare systems were overwhelmed.² What mattered was cutting through the noise and misinformation to guide a proportionate operational response. Hospital capacity concerns, travel advisories, and precautionary pauses reminded businesses that even routine seasonal illness can trigger significant disruption when it occurs at scale.

Medical Risk: From Background Noise to Business Disruption

In 2023, Bangladesh recorded its “largest and deadliest outbreak of the Dengue virus”, with over 1,700 deaths.³ High transmission was again seen in  2024.⁴ Hospitals struggled, and development projects faced disruptions as authorities threatened to suspend work on construction sites with repeated mosquito violations.^{5, 6} The scale of the outbreak demonstrated how vector-borne diseases can test medical infrastructure and disrupt operations.

In Brazil and across parts of the Americas, Oropouche virus, an emerging vector-borne illness, has spread rapidly, with new geographies reporting cases.⁷ The U.S. CDC issued Level 2 travel notices for affected countries, while countries like Canada recorded their first imported cases from travelers, highlighting how quickly regional outbreaks become global operational concerns.^{8, 9}

Meanwhile, Rwanda's Marburg virus outbreak from September to December 2024 prompted the CDC to initially issue a Level 3 notice to reconsider nonessential travel.^{10, 11} Responsibility for disease surveillance, outbreak response, and public health messaging does not rest solely with government agencies. Companies must consider their operational responses for, navigating travel restrictions, contact tracing requirements, and business continuity planning in real-time.

Companies must make real-time decisions about personnel safety, travel restrictions, medical evacuation protocols, and business continuity. This shift means operations teams must effectively function as frontline risk assessors, making complex judgments that directly impact employee welfare and business operations.

These are not isolated events. They reflect a growing pattern where medical volatility is now a lead disruptor, not a downstream effect.

Risk Footprint

As global connectivity intensifies and health systems become increasingly interdependent, the traditional boundaries between "safe" and "fragile" zones are dissolving. This means that a company's risk exposure, known as its operational risk footprint, is no longer geographically contained. An outbreak in one region can rapidly affect supply chains, workforce availability, and operational capacity across multiple continents. The risk footprint now extends beyond physical assets to encompass the health vulnerabilities of interconnected global systems that businesses depend upon.

The Collapse of the ‘Safe Zone’ Myth

In winter 2024-2025, the UK healthcare system strained under 'tripledemic' conditions, with NHS England reporting flu patients quadrupled to over 5,000 ahead of New Year 2025.¹²  Hospital capacity pressures continued into 2024-2025, with facilities operating at higher occupancy rates than pre-pandemic levels, leaving little buffer for seasonal respiratory illness surges and creating access challenges for urgent care, even in well-resourced cities in the United States.¹³

Globally, antimicrobial resistance continues to rise, with the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) estimating 4.95 million deaths associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in 2019 alone, a death toll that exceeds malaria's annual impact, complicating care for even minor conditions.¹⁴

Figure 3, Global deaths (counts) attributable to and associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance by infectious syndrome, 2019
Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis. Murray, Christopher J L et al.The Lancet, Volume 399, Issue 10325, 629 - 655

Adding to the strain on hospitals and medical staff is the ongoing opioid epidemic, though recent data shows encouraging trends.¹⁵ Despite this improvement, companies with field teams continue to maintain naloxone training and emergency response protocols as standard practice, with over 250 organizations, including Amazon, making voluntary commitments to provide naloxone in workplaces, while construction sites in some jurisdictions now legally require naloxone kits on-site.¹⁶

Advanced healthcare infrastructure does not guarantee operational resilience against medical disruptions. The global risk landscape has fundamentally shifted, requiring all organizations to reassess their vulnerability assessment frameworks regardless of their operational geography.

When Health and Security Risks Overlap

Medical emergencies rarely occur in isolation; they emerge amid conflict, power outages, misinformation campaigns, and infrastructure failure, creating compound risk scenarios that amplify operational challenges. 

• In conflict zones, clinics collapse, and routine care becomes inaccessible.¹⁷
• In extreme weather events and natural disasters, power may fail, and those needing refrigerated medicine or life-supporting equipment are at immediate risk.¹⁸
• In disinformation environments, vaccine uptake falls and panic spreads faster than pathogens.¹⁹

A fragile healthcare system is not just a symptom of crisis; it can be the cause of one. Organizations now recognize that medical and security risks are increasingly interwoven. 

The New Standard: Integrated, Intelligence-Led Readiness

Recent global health events, including the emergency declaration for mpox in August 2024, H5N1 bird flu transmission to humans across multiple countries, and the 20% surge in measles cases worldwide, have exposed systemic vulnerabilities across all operational environments. ^{20, 21, 22} 2025 tests whether businesses have learnt from them.

Leaders are moving from reaction to readiness, adopting models that:

• Integrate real-time outbreak intelligence into travel approvals and routing through pandemic preparedness sites.
• Use remote diagnostics to monitor field staff in under-resourced or unstable regions.
• Build medical evacuation strategies that factor in geopolitical overlays and local medical system capacity and capabilities.
• Simulate crisis scenarios involving simultaneous health, environmental, and security events.

These are not theoretical upgrades. They are fast becoming baseline expectations for meeting your organization's obligation to Duty of Care, especially in sectors with dispersed teams or high mobility.

Conclusion

Global health volatility is not slowing. From zoonotic disease to antimicrobial resistance and degraded care access in unstable regions, the list of threats is growing.

What matters now is preparedness. Because medical risk is operational risk, and resilience begins with recognizing that the next significant disruption may not come from conflict or climate, but from the degradation of healthcare systems themselves.

How International SOS Can Help

For 40 years, we have delivered support across medical emergencies, global outbreaks, and complex evacuations.

From deploying on-the-ground care teams in dengue zones, to arranging cardiac care amid protests, to executing medical extractions near conflict zones, our integrated risk intelligence and rapid response systems are built for moments when infrastructure fails and people still need care.

1. ^{International SOS Podcast HMPV Outbreak in China, 9 January 2025}
2. ^{World Health Organisation Disease Outbreak News 7 January 2025}
3. ^{Hasan MN, Rahman M, et al. The 2023 fatal dengue outbreak in Bangladesh highlights a paradigm shift of geographical distribution of cases. Epidemiol Infect. 2025 Jan 7;15 e3.}
4. ^{Bangladesh Directorate General of Health Services Dengue Dashboard accessed 14 July 2025}
5. ^{Rahat Touhid Dengue poses an increasingly severe threat to Bangladesh—and the world’s largest refugee camp BMJ 2025;389:r442}
6. ^{The Business Standard 18 June 2023}
7. ^{International SOS Podcast Oropouche – An Emerging Health Threat 12 September 2024}
8. ^{International SOS Pandemic News, Canada Imported Case of Oropouche 8 September 2024}
9. ^{International SOS Pandemic Information Website Oropouche}
10. ^{International SOS Pandemic News Rwanda Marburg Outbreak Sep-Dec 2024}
11. ^{Africa CDC Applauds US Decision to Lift Level 3 Travel Health Notice for Rwanda 23 November 2024}
12. ^{NHS England Busiest year on record for emergency services as winter flu pressure rages on 9 January 2025}
13. ^{UCLA U.S. facing critical hospital bed shortage by 2032, UCLA research suggests 19 February 2025}
14. ^{University of Oxford An estimated 1.2 million people died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections 20 January 2022}
15. ^{US CDC CDC Reports Nearly 24% Decline in U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths 25 February 2025}
16. ^{The White House Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Over 250 Organizations Made Voluntary Commitments to White House Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose 8 October 2024}
17. ^{Aldabbour B, Barakat Y, Elamassie S et al. War and chronic illness: a health center-based study of Palestinians with non-communicable diseases in Gaza. Confl Health. 2025 Jun 24;19(1):36}
18. ^{Kosari S, Walker EJ, Anderson C, et al. Power outages and refrigerated medicines: The need for better guidelines, awareness and planning. J Clin Pharm Ther. 2018 Oct;43(5):737-739}
19. ^{Van der Linden, S. Misinformation: susceptibility, spread, and interventions to immunize the public. Nat Med 28, 460–467 (2022)}
20. ^{International SOS Pandemic Information Website Mpox}
21. ^{International SOS Pandemic Information Website Bird Flu H5N1}
22. ^{UK Health Security Agency Measles outbreaks continue with risk of holidays causing surge 5 June 2025}