Emerging Infections
The challenge before us is how best to govern ourselves and stymie the flood we unleashed - Ferris Jabr vice
image by: Commonwealth Animal Hospital
HWN Recommends
How Humanity Unleashed a Flood of New Diseases
Between 60 and 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases in humans come from other animals. Many zoonoses — rabies, Lyme, anthrax, mad cow disease, SARS, Ebola, West Nile, Zika — loom large in public consciousness; others are less familiar: Q fever, orf, Rift Valley fever, Kyasanur Forest disease. More than a few, including influenza, AIDS and the bubonic plague, have caused some of the deadliest outbreaks in recorded history. Although zoonoses are ancient, thought to be referenced in Mesopotamian tablets and the Bible, their numbers have increased in the last few decades, along with the frequency of outbreaks.
Zoonotic pathogens do not typically seek us out nor do they stumble…
Resources
'Like Poking a Beehive': The Worrisome Link Between Deforestation And Disease
Faust has spent much of her career studying spillover between animals and humans, and trying to understand what drives those events. She says there's a relationship between deforestation and the emergence of zoonotic disease, but it's not entirely clear why. "We don't know if that's because we're losing biodiversity that would otherwise... help dilute that pathogen, or if it's because we have more humans coming in to the area and doing risky behaviors," she says.
Disease X Is What May Become The Biggest Infectious Threat To Our World
The World Health Organization (WHO) has now added Disease X to its Blueprint list of priority diseases. What? WHO? What the heck is Disease X? No, this is not Wolverine getting a bad hangnail, Mystique getting jaundiced, or some other X-Men problem. Nor is it caused by Generation X, the generation supposedly "steeped in irony, detachment, and a sense of dread." And, no it isn't a bad bottle of Dos Equis XX.
What the latest coronavirus tells us about emerging new infections
The outbreak is not entirely unexpected. Coronaviruses are among the emerging pathogens that the World Health Organisation in 2015 identified as likely to cause severe outbreaks in the near future. For a long time is was difficult to identify the causative agent of infectious diseases. The rapid development of various molecular detection tools has enabled researchers to identify several new respiratory viruses. It has also helped with the characterisation of novel emergent strains.
Emerging Infections and Biothreats
Public health emergencies caused by infectious threats have the potential to kill thousands or millions of people. These threats can emerge naturally as outbreaks or pandemics, such as influenza (pandemic and seasonal), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), extremely-drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis, New Delhi metallo-b-lactamase 1 (NDM1), antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, and HIV/AIDS. Or, they can emerge deliberately through bioterrorism, such as the 2001 anthrax attacks or potential threats posed by smallpox, tularemia, and plague. Infectious threats can undermine not only patient care and public health, but also national security. Influenza pandemics, for example, have a long history of devastation in terms of lives lost, hospitalizations, and destabilizing national economies.
Emerging infectious diseases: A proactive approach
Infectious diseases are now emerging or reemerging almost every year. This trend will continue because a number of factors, including the increased global population, aging, travel, urbanization, and climate change, favor the emergence, evolution, and spread of new pathogens.
Emerging infectious diseases: the role of social sciences
Popular and scientific representations of research into emerging infectious disease often focus on the pathogen itself–its molecular machinery, processes of reassortment and mutation, and how these factors indicate risk for human-to-human transmission. However, social and ecological processes that facilitate infection also deserve close attention, as emphasised in the Lancet Series on zoonoses.
The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?
The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.
How Humanity Unleashed a Flood of New Diseases
What do Covid-19, Ebola, Lyme and AIDS have in common? They jumped to humans from animals after we started destroying habitats and ruining ecosystems.
4 reasons disease outbreaks are erupting around the world
MERS, H1N1, swine flu, chikungunya, Zika: Another virus with a peculiar name always seems to be right around the corner, threatening to become a pandemic. Many of the pathogens that spark deadly outbreaks aren't new. Researchers have known about Zika since the 1940s and Ebola since the 1970s. Some of these viruses have evolved with humans for hundreds or thousands of years. But viruses, bacteria, and fungi can now spread around the world with greater effectiveness and speed than ever before. And when they turn up unexpectedly in new places, they catch doctors and health systems — and people's immune systems — off guard.
Solve the Outbreak
Get clues, analyze data, solve the case, and save lives! In this fun app, you get to be the Disease Detective. Do you quarantine the village? Talk to people who are sick? Ask for more lab results?
Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases
We've built what has been called one of the world's best programs, organized under the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases. We work for you, to understand biological threats to you and your family's health, and to develop treatments and vaccines to keep you healthy and safe.
Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases
Established in 2003, CEID focuses upon research and training regarding emerging infectious diseases, particularly those that are zoonotic.
Emerging Infections Network
In 1995, the CDC granted a Cooperative Agreement Program award to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to develop a provider-based emerging infections sentinel network: the Emerging Infections Network (IDSA EIN). During the past decade, the IDSA EIN has evolved into a flexible sentinel network composed of over 1,100 infectious disease specialists primarily from North America, with some global members. The overarching goal of the EIN is to assist CDC and other public health authorities with surveillance for emerging infectious diseases and related phenomena.
Emerging Infectious Diseases
Emerging Infectious Diseases represents the scientific communications component of CDC's efforts against the threat of emerging infections. However, even as it addresses CDC's interest in the elusive, continuous, evolving, and global nature of these infections, the journal relies on a broad international authorship base and is rigorously peer-reviewed by independent reviewers from all over the world.
Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER)
The Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER) serves as an essential instrument for the rapid and accurate dissemination of epidemiological information on cases and outbreaks of diseases under the International Health Regulations and on other communicable diseases of public health importance, including emerging or re-emerging infections.
California Emerging Infections Program
As part of the EIP network, the CEIP has been an invaluable national resource for surveillance, prevention, and control of emerging infectious diseases since 1994.
Duke Global Health Institute
Seeking solutions to the world’s most challenging health problems.
Emerging Infectious Diseases Graduate Program
The required curriculum consists of the core courses and electives, training rotations in research laboratories, and completion of a research dissertation. Every student will also be required to attend an EID Journal Club and an EID Seminar Series.
National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories
Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) research in the NEIDL is underway as of early April 2012. BU researchers dedicate their current efforts to tuberculosis (TB) research with BSL-2 approval.
Healthcare Industry Today
Emerging Infectious Diseases News is an EIN News Service for health professionals. Constantly updated news and information about health.
National Center for Infectious Diseases
Emerging Infectious Diseases Resource Links
WHO
Disease Outbreak News
Wikipedia
An emerging infectious disease (EID) is an infectious disease whose incidence has increased in the past 35 years and could increase in the near future.
Introducing Stitches!
Your Path to Meaningful Connections in the World of Health and Medicine
Connect, Collaborate, and Engage!
Coming Soon - Stitches, the innovative chat app from the creators of HWN. Join meaningful conversations on health and medical topics. Share text, images, and videos seamlessly. Connect directly within HWN's topic pages and articles.