# 1087
Earlier this week the big story was that researchers at St. Jude's Hospital had mapped the differences between human pandemic strains of influenza, and the current H5N1 bird flu, and determined that at least 13 changes were needed before it could become a genuine pandemic threat.
We were told, via the mainstream press, that the pandemic threat was `subsiding'.
Well, maybe . . .
Counterbalancing this reassuring reportage we have this story making the rounds, where the WHO warns that newly emerging infectious diseases are appearing at an unprecedented rate, and that we will likely face a major global health crisis from one of them within a decade.
World faces threat from new deadly diseases as scientists struggle to keep up, say experts
· Infectious illness spreads at fastest rate in history
· WHO calls for worldwide effort to avoid pandemics
Polly Curtis, health correspondent
Friday August 24, 2007
The Guardian
The world will face a new deadly threat on the scale of Aids, Sars and Ebola within a decade, the world's leading authority on health said yesterday, as it warned that diseases were spreading more quickly than at any time in history.
New diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate, of one a year, and are becoming more difficult to treat, says the World Health Organisation's annual report. It paints a bleak picture of future health threats, with science struggling to keep up as diseases increasingly become drug resistant.
The authors point to passenger flights, now numbering more than 2bn a year, as being a chillingly efficient mechanism for spreading diseases rapidly across continents. New diseases that pose a sudden threat in one part of the world are only "a few hours away" from becoming a threat somewhere else, the WHO says.
"Profound changes have occurred in the way humanity inhabits the planet," said Margaret Chan, the director general of the WHO. "The disease situation is anything but stable. Population growth, incursion into previously uninhabited areas, rapid urbanisation, intensive farming practices, environmental degradation, and the misuse of anti-microbials, have disrupted the equilibrium of the microbial world. The rate of emergence of new diseases, at one year, was "historically unprecedented".
The report, A Safer Future, identifies 40 diseases unknown a generation ago, and reveals that during the past five years the WHO has verified more than 1,100 epidemic events worldwide. It says:
· Cholera, yellow fever and epidemic meningococcal diseases made a comeback in the last quarter of the 20th century.
· Severe acute respiratory syndrome and avian influenza in humans still have the potential to wreak havoc globally.
· Viral diseases such as Ebola, Marburg haemorrhagic fever and Nipah virus, pose threats to global public health security.
· The use of smallpox in bioterrorism is a particularly worrying threat. Authorities around the world should work together to combat the kind of bioterrorism that occurred with the letters warning of anthrax after September 11 2001.
· A flu pandemic would affect more than 1.5 billion people, or 25% of the world's population. Even if the disease were mild in itself the economic and social disruption would be "enormous".
The WHO report adds: "It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like Aids, another Ebola, or another Sars, sooner or later."
The problem, of course, is we don't know which emerging infectious disease will sweep the globe and cause the next pandemic. Avian Flu is assumed to be the biggest threat, but each year we seem to find a new, infectious disease coming from the wild. It could well be Virus X, something we've never seen (or at least recognized) before, that sucker punches us.
The only defense is a good offense, and that means a robust global public health system. Surveillance, detection, and prevention. And that takes not only a commitment of money, but international cooperation.
And so far, we've seen a dearth of both.
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