|
| Lyme, SARS, West Nile, Ebola, Nipah, Hendra, AIDS... |
... and other nasty infectious disorders.
Experts say we're living in an age of infections. |
170,000 children in India live with AIDS which is 0.16 per 1,000
|
|
|
Probability of dying before 5 years in Indian females is 99 of 1,000
|
|
Probability of not reaching 40 years is 16.7 per cent
|
|
Around 18 per cent Indian children are underweight at birth
|
|
For most of these diseases, we mostly have ourselves to blame. Top scientists say environmental, economic, social and scientific changes have helped trigger an unprecedented explosion of more than 35 new infectious diseases, that have burst upon the world in the past 30 years. The US death rate from infectious diseases, which dropped in first part of the 20th century and then stabilised, is now double what it was in 1980. SARS is only the latest of these new germs.
|
|
Even as most of the world struggles to cope with the threat of severe acute respiratory syndrome, infectious disease specialists are warily eyeing an outbreak of a bird influenza in the Netherlands. Only one person has died so far, but forms of flu that are new to humans can be deadly.
|
|
"Today's outlook with regard to microbial threats to health is bleak," concludes a 396-page March report from the prestigious Institute of Medicine. "Microbial threats present us with new surprises each year." Every hour 1,500 people worldwide die of an old or new infectious disease, and more than half of those are children under five.
|
|
Many of the infectious diseases that now seem common - food borne E coli, waterborne Cryptosporidium, air borne Legionnaire's disease, blood borne hepatitis C and sexually transmitted AIDS - first surfaced in roughly the past 30 years.
|
|
To figure out why it was happening, the Institute of Medicine convened a panel of top US researchers. They attributed the surge in new diseases to 13 specific changes in the world and the way we live. These factors are microbial adaptation and change; human susceptibility to infection; climate and weather; changing ecosystems; human demographics and behaviour; economic development and land use; international travel and commerce; technology and industry; breakdown of public health measures; poverty and social inequality; war and famine; lack of political will; and bio-terrorism.
|
|
Of the more than 35 new emerging diseases since the 70s, a substantial proportion related to man's manipulation of ecology. More and more people are now living in mega-cities, which increases risk for dissemination, more people moving into habitat used by animals as vectors for (disease) transmission, more international travel and commerce, which disseminates (germs) once they have arisen. More poverty and social inequalities add to it.
|
|
Most of these diseases live in animals and the epidemic triggers off when they jump from animal to humans due to close contact. It happens when the humans get the land cleared for housing or industry and get closer to ticks, mosquitoes and rodents carrying new diseases.
|
|
Lyme disease soared in the US after land clearing in northeast drew white-tailed deer closer to humans. Lyme-carrying ticks, which lived on these deer, could easily reach humans and infect them. New dams cause changes in water flow, often increasing mosquito populations. Dense urban populations, people living longer and the increased number of immune-compromised people also help diseases spread faster.
|
|
Another reason is when the countries hide new outbreaks, the same way as China did with SARS. Diseases also spread faster due to lack of public health systems that are capable of detecting outbreaks.
|
|
Experts attribute weather changes as a major factor in influencing new diseases. West Nile and hantavirus struck in the US after severe droughts. That's because transfers of mosquito borne diseases are easier when large number of animals congregate around small pools of water. Some extreme weather events can be attributable to global warming.
|
|
Many new diseases are strains of old diseases that have developed resistance to antibiotics. Once a disease takes hold these days, it tends to globalise quickly by travel and trade. For example, West Nile is thought to have reached New York from its traditional home in the Middle East on an infected bird carried by a ship or plane. With SARS, doctors have been able to pinpoint tourists, businessmen and doctors who have taken the virus from Hong Kong to Hanoi, Singapore and Toronto. It set a record for speed of continent-to-continent transmission.
|
|
Although SARS isn't as contagious as measles or common flu, airborne transmission makes it easier to spread than diseases requiring a mosquito bite such as West Nile.
|
