Do we have to fear biological war?
Silent weapons. Real danger?
Using PAST diseases to try to kill in wartime is nothing new. In the 14th century, Eastern Europe, victims of the plague corpses were catapulted over the walls of a city under siege. In an incident 400 years later, British officials have purposely throughout blankets infected with smallpox to American Indians at a peace conference during a war against the French and Indians. This has resulted in an epidemic that contributed to the surrender of the Indians. But it was not until the late 19th century it was discovered that microbes causing infectious diseases. This discovery opened new and terrifying possibilities for the military use of the diseases.
Of course, medical and scientific advances have also led to the development of drugs and vaccines. These have been very successful in treating and preventing diseases. But despite the advances, infectious diseases remain terrible enemy, killing more than 17 million people a year, or about 50,000 per day. It is a sad irony that, while brilliant men and women dedicate their lives to overcome the diseases that afflict humanity, others with equal dedication and skill, focus on destroying human lives through disease.
Attempts to ban biological weapons
For over 25 years, the United States, the former Soviet Union and several other nations ambitiously thought to develop biological weapons. In 1972, nations agreed to ban these weapons. Some countries, however, continued to develop them and research them clandestinely, accumulating stockpiles of deadly biological agents and creating ways to disseminate them.
What led to the official ban on such weapons? According to the mentality of the early ’70s, biological agents, though highly lethal, are not effective weapons on the battlefield. One reason is that its action is not immediate — it takes time before symptoms appear. Another reason is that its effectiveness is affected by wind variations and weather conditions. In addition, nations realized that if a country used its biological weapons against another, the target nation likely retaliate with its own arsenal of biological or nuclear weapons. Finally, for many people it was morally repugnant the idea spread, deliberately living organisms in order to incapacitate or kill other humans.
It is unlikely that any of these reasons is sufficient to deter hateful people and willing to act away from traditional moral standards. Biological weapons arouse great interest in individuals determined to cause indiscriminate killings. You can develop them and use them in secret. The identity of the attacker can be concealed, and even if it is discovered, it is not easy to retaliate if it belongs to a terrorist network with cells spread across many countries. Moreover, only the panic created by a silent biological attack, invisible, slow and deadly action may be enough to destabilize a population. Attacks against crops or animal breeding can cause famine and economic collapse.
Another encouraging the use of biological weapons is that its development cost is relatively low. An analysis compared what it would cost to kill defenseless civilians in an area of one square kilometer using various types of weapons. The estimated cost of using conventional weapons was $ 2,000; nuclear weapons, $ 800; weapons that use nerve agents, $ 600 and biological weapons, $ 1.
Technical difficulties
The press has published reports that some terrorist groups have experimented with biological weapons. But there is a big difference between experience and a successful attack.
To be successful, a terrorist or a terrorist organization would have to overcome formidable technical challenges. First, you need to obtain a sufficiently lethal strain of the pathogen. Second, learn to manipulate it and store it properly and safely. Third, you must have technical knowledge of how to produce it in large quantities. If the pathogen is released precisely on target, small amounts of it can be lethal enough to decimate a crop, a flock or a city. But these micro-organisms do not survive well outside the laboratory. In fact, only a fraction of the biological agent would reach the target population, so that would require very large quantities to make a catastrophic attack.
And that’s not all. The terrorist must know how to keep the pathogen alive and well during shipping location which is stored to where it will be released. Finally, you must know disperse it efficiently. This involves releasing the pathogen on the target in the right particle size and disperse it in an appropriate geographical area and a large enough concentration to cause mass infection. It took more than 10 years for a highly trained team of US researchers specialized in biological warfare produce a reliable use of such weapons system. After being released into the atmosphere, the biological agent is exposed to sunlight and temperature variations, which can kill you. Therefore, in order to transform a microorganism weapon, you need detailed knowledge of their behavior when in contact with air.
Taking into account the many technical difficulties involved, it is no wonder that occurred a few terrorist attacks using biological weapons. Moreover, these attacks have produced few casualties. Recently, anthrax letters killed five people in the United States. Of course, this was tragic, but many more people would have died if it had been used a small bomb or a gun. Researchers estimate that since 1975, 96% of attacks that used chemical or biological agents worldwide, were not killed or wounded more than three people in each attack.
Recognizing the difficulties involved in launching a successful biological attack, the British-American Council on Security Information stated: “While governments being faced with a barrage of threats from chemical and biological terrorism, most analysts believe that disasters with heavy casualties, though possible, are highly unlikely. “But while the odds may be small, the consequences of such an attack would be terrible.
Bad News
So far, we present the good news: both the technical difficulties as history indicates that it is unlikely the occurrence of catastrophic biological attacks. Now, the bad news, which in summary are: history is not an infallible guide to the future. While past attacks in general have failed, future attacks can succeed.
There are concerns. It seems that more and more terrorists are determined to kill many people. Besides being becoming more technologically sophisticated, some terrorist groups have financial and technical resources that are equivalent to those of certain governments.
Experts do not seem concerned about the ability to deliver biological weapons countries to terrorist groups. One analyst said: “Governments, although they can be cruel, ambitious, and ideologically extreme, will be reluctant to deliver unconventional weapons to terrorist groups over which they have full control; governments may be tempted to use themselves these weapons in a first strike, but is more likely to use it as a deterrent than the war itself. “What really leaves many concerned experts is that terrorist groups recruit scientists highly trained waving them with lucrative offers.
Designed to cause diseases
Advances in biotechnology are also cause for concern. Scientists already have the technical knowledge required to change existing pathogens, making them extremely lethal and at the same time, easier to handle. Can genetically alter harmless microorganisms to produce toxins. They can also manipulate organisms to escape to traditional methods of detection. It is also possible to design micro-organisms resistant to antibiotics, conventional vaccines and therapies. Scientists who defected from the former Soviet Union, for example, claimed to have developed a form of plague resistant to 16 antibiotics.
It is believed that future developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering will eventually expanding the options. Scientists can scramble the genetic code to modify or design a multitude of biological weapons — more deadly, more resilient and easier to produce and release. They can be designed in such a way that its effects are more predictable and controllable. They may be created pathogens programmed to die after a certain number of cell divisions — they kill and then disappear.
In the future it may be possible also to design extraordinary stealth diseases. For example, a very specific biological weapon could disable the immune system itself — instead of being infected by a particular disease, the victim would be at the mercy of many diseases such as in the case of HIV. If a deadly virus of this type, who can know if it came from a natural mutation or genetic manipulation in a laboratory enemy?
Technological advances have changed the mindset of the military. A US naval officer wrote: “Gun makers have barely begun to tap the potential of the biotechnology revolution. It is worrying to imagine that, in this field, there will be even more discoveries in the future. “
What is biological warfare?
The term “germ warfare” refers to the deliberate spreading of diseases among humans, animals or plants. The disease occurs when the target population is infected by living microorganisms. They multiply (some producing toxins) and, with time, the disease symptoms appear. Some biological weapons leave the disabled person; other kill. Still others can be used to attack and destroy crops.
Information Biological Weapons
Anthrax: infectious disease caused by a bacterium that releases spores. The first symptoms of inhalation anthrax resemble those of a common cold. After several days, the symptoms progress to severe breathing problems and shock. This form of anthrax is usually fatal.
Antibiotics can prevent people exposed to anthrax infection develop. It is vital that treatment be started soon; the more delay, the smaller the chances of survival.
Direct transmission from person to person, anthrax is extremely unlikely. It may never occur.
In the second half of the 20th century, several countries, including the United States and the former Soviet Union, studied the use of anthrax as a weapon. The number of countries presumed to possess biological weapons programs has increased from 10 in 1989 to 17 in 1995. No one knows for sure how many of these countries have anthrax. According to an assessment published by the US government, the release of about 100 kilograms of anthrax aerosol over a major city could be as lethal as a hydrogen bomb.
Botulism: disease that paralyzes muscles. It is caused by a bacterium that produces toxins. Symptoms of food poisoning by botulism include blurred or double vision, difficulty keeping your eyes open, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and dry mouth. It comes a muscle weakness that usually begins by the shoulders and moves down the body. Paralysis of breathing muscles can cause death. It is not transmitted from person to person.
An antitoxin, if administered in time, reduces the severity of symptoms and the probability of death.
Botulinum toxin would be first in the selection of a bioweapon not only as one of the most poisonous substances known, but it is relatively easy to be produced and transported. Furthermore, infected require intensive and extended care. It is suspected that many countries are developing botulinum toxin as a biological weapon.
Plague: highly infectious disease caused by a bacterium. The first signs of pneumonic plague, which is often fatal, are fever, headache, weakness and cough. septic shock It follows, and without prompt treatment with antibiotics, death is almost inevitable.
The disease is transmitted from person to person by saliva droplets.
During the 14th century, in five years, the plague killed about 13 million people in China and 20 million to 30 million in Europe.
In the decades of 50 and 60, both the United States and the former Soviet Union developed techniques to spread pneumonic plague. It is believed that thousands of scientists worked to transform the plague weapon.
Smallpox: highly infectious disease caused by a virus. Early symptoms include high fever, fatigue, headaches and back. Then, there are painful lesions that are filled with pus. One in three victims dies.
Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1977. Routine vaccination against the disease ended in the mid-70s is impossible to determine what degree of immunity people vaccinated before it have, if we still have some. There is no proven treatment for smallpox.
The disease is transmitted from person to person by infected saliva droplets. contaminated bedding or clothing can also spread the virus.
Since 1980, the Soviet Union developed a successful program of large-scale production of smallpox and smallpox adapted to be carried by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Efforts have been made to develop strains also more virulent and more contagious smallpox.
Recently, anthrax letters spread fear
Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA; Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies.
The Black Plague: Plague that devastated medieval Europe
The year was 1347. The plague had already ravaged the Far East and now came to the eastern borders of Europe.
The Mongols besieging Café (a trading post Genoese fortified, today called Feodosia in the Crimea) were being decimated by the mysterious disease and therefore stopped the attack. But before withdrawing, they made a last devastating offensive. Using giant catapults, launched over the city walls the still-warm bodies of plague victims. When some Genoese soldiers later fled in their galleys city swept by plague, spread the disease to every port they visited.
In some months, the death was spreading across Europe. It quickly spread to North Africa, Italy, Spain, England, France, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. In just over two years, more than a quarter of Europe’s population — about 25 million souls — fell victim to what has been called “the most brutal demographic catastrophe humanity has ever seen”: The Black Death.
The causes of the tragedy
There was much more involved in the tragedy of the Black Death than the disease itself. Several factors contributed to worsen the disaster, including religious fanaticism. An example of this is the doctrine of purgatory. “At the end of the 13th century, purgatory was everywhere,” says French historian Jacques le Goff. In the early 14th century, Dante launched his work The Divine Comedy, whose detailed descriptions of hell and purgatory greatly influenced people. This religious climate, people viewed the plague with surprising apathy and resignation, thinking that it was a divine punishment. As we shall see, this pessimistic concept actually contributed to the disease spreading. “Nothing could have prepared a better ground for the plague spread,” says the book The Black Death (Black Death), by Philip Ziegler.
Another problem was the repeated crop failures in Europe. As a result, the growing population of the continent was malnourished, unable to resist disease.
The plague spreads
According to Guy de Chauliac, personal physician of Pope Clement VI, two types of plague invaded Europe: pneumonic and bubonic. He described in detail these diseases, saying: “The first lasted two months, with continuous fever and bloody sputum, and one died in three days. The second lasted for the rest of the period, also with continuous fever but with apostemas [abscesses] and carbuncles on the external parts, mainly in the armpits and groin. The person died in five days. “Doctors were unable to stop the spread of the pest.
Many people fled in panic, leaving thousands of infected backs. In fact, the first to flee were wealthy noblemen and professionals. Although some clerics also have fled, many religious orders hid in monasteries, hoping to escape contamination.
Amid the panic, the pope declared 1350 a holy year. The pilgrims were the Roma receive direct access to paradise without having to go to purgatory. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims heeded the call, spreading the plague during the trip.
Frustrated efforts
Efforts to control the Black Death were in vain because no one really knew how it was transmitted. Many realized that contact with a patient, or even with his clothing, was dangerous. Some were afraid to look the patient. But residents of Florence, Italy, found that dogs and cats were blamed for the plague. They killed these animals without knowing that in doing so, made their way to the creature that was really involved in the transmission of the disease: the mouse.
As deaths increased, some began to turn to God for help. Men and women gave all they had to the church, hoping that God would protect them from the disease, or at least reward them with heavenly life if they died. With this, the Church has accumulated enormous wealth. Some popular antidotes were lucky charms, images of Christ and talismans. Others resorted to superstition, magic and folk medicine to heal. It was said that perfume, vinegar, and special potions could ward off the disease. Another treatment very used was the sangria. The renowned medical school at the University of Paris even attributed the plague to the alignment of the planets. False explanations and “cures,” however, have done nothing to halt the progress of this killer plague.
Lasting effects
After five years the Black Death finally seemed to have ended. But before the end of the century, it still attacks at least four times. Its effects have been compared to the First World War. “Virtually all modern historians agree that the endemic fever emergence had profound consequences on the economy and in society after 1348, “says the book The Black Death in England (The Black Death in England), 1996. The plague decimated much of the population and certain regions have taken centuries to recover. With a smaller workforce, the cost of hand labor naturally rose. Rich owners of failed land and the feudal system — a hallmark of the Middle Ages — collapsed.
So the plague gave impetus to political, religious and social changes. Before her, the educated class in England generally spoke French. But due to the death of many French teachers, the English language has gained more importance than the French in Britain. There were also religious changes. As mentioned in the French historian Jacqueline Brossollet due to the decrease of candidates for the priesthood, “the Church often had to recruit ignorant and apathetic people.” Brossollet states that “the decline of faith and study centers [of the Church] was one of the causes of the Reformation.”
The Black Death certainly left its mark on art, because death has become a common artistic theme. The famous danse macabre, genre that usually represents skeletons and corpses, became a popular allegory of the power of death. Uncertain about the future, many survivors of the plague have abandoned all moral restraint. Thus, morality hit rock bottom. Since the Church had failed to prevent the Black Death, “medieval man felt that his Church had dececionado”. (The Black Death). Some historians also say that the social changes that resulted from the Black Death fostered individualism and initiative, increasing the social and economic mobility — the precursors of capitalism.
The Black Death also forced governments to install sanitation systems. Once the plague ended, Venice took measures to clean up the streets. Similarly, in France, King John II, the Good, ordered that the streets were cleaned in order to tackle the threat of epidemics. The king commanded to do so after learning that an ancient Greek physician had saved Athens from a plague by cleaning and washing the streets. Many medieval streets, which had been open sewers, were finally cleaned up.
Thing of the past?
But it was only in 1894 that French bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin isolated the bacillus responsible for the Black Death. It was named Yersinia pestis after him. Four years later another Frenchman, Paul-Louis Simond, discovered the role of the rat flea in the transmission of disease. Then a relatively effective vaccine has been developed.
Is the plague a thing of the past? No. In the winter of 1910, some 50,000 people died from the plague in Manchuria. Every year the World Health Organization registers thousands of new cases and the number continues to increase. They were also discovered new strains of the disease that resist treatment. In fact, if not followed basic hygiene standards, plague continue to threaten mankind. So the book Pourquoi la peste? Le rat, la puce et le bubon (Why the Plague? The Rat, the Flea, and the Bubo), edited by Jacqueline Brossollet and Henri Mollaret concludes that “far from being an old European disease in the Middle Ages, unfortunately plague It may be the disease of the future. “
The Black Death was not the end
IN October 1347, Middle of merchant ships anchored in the port of Messina, Sicily. The board paddlers sick and near death. In their bodies, dark tumor the size of a hen’s egg, exuded blood and pus. The sailors suffered severe pain and died days after the appearance of the first symptoms.
Rats slipped ships and joined the local rodent population. These mice carry infected flea’s bacillus lethal to humans. It was so spread the epidemic plague known as the Black Death, the worst epidemic in European history until then.
The plague took two forms. A, transmitted by the bite of an infected flea, spread to the bloodstream causing tumors and internal bleeding. The other was transmitted by coughing or sneezing with infected lungs. Since both forms were present, the disease spread rapidly, with terrible ferocity. In just three years, wiped out a quarter of the European population; possibly 25 million people died.
No one knew how the disease passed from one person to another. Some thought the air was poisoned, perhaps because of an earthquake or an unusual alignment of planets. Others thought it was sick just looking at an infected. Although opinions varied, the disease was obviously very contagious. According to a French doctor, it appeared that a patient “could infect the whole world.”
Not known prevention or cure. Many reflected on Bible prophecy, such as Luke 21:11, which predicts “pestilence” for the end time. Despite the money that came in the churches, the plague continued. An Italian wrote at the time: “It touched bells and no one cried, no matter what his loss because almost everyone expected death, people said and believed: ‘. It is the end of the world’”
But it was not. In the late 14th century the plague was over. The world continued.
Victories and defeats in the war against disease
ON August 5, 1942, Dr. Alexander Fleming found that one of his patients, who was also his friend, was dying. The 52-year-old man had contracted spinal meningitis, and despite all of Fleming’s efforts, had entered into a coma.
Fifteen years earlier, Fleming had discovered by chance a remarkable substance produced by a bluish-green mold and called penicillin. He noted that the substance was able to kill bacteria, but could not isolate pure penicillin and tested it only as an antiseptic. In 1938, however, Howard Florey and his research team at the University of Oxford, England, faced the challenge of producing an amount sufficient drug to test it in humans. Fleming called Florey, who was willing to send all the penicillin he had available. It was the last chance to save his friend Fleming.
As an intramuscular injection of penicillin was not enough, Fleming injected the drug directly at his friend’s spine. The penicillin destroyed the microbes and, in just over a week, the patient left the hospital completely cured. The era of antibiotics had begun, and a new milestone had been reached in the war of mankind against diseases.
The era of antibiotics
When antibiotics have emerged, they appeared to be miracle drugs. Hitherto untreatable infections caused by bacteria, fungi or other microorganisms could now be treated effectively. Thanks to the new drugs, the number of deaths due to meningitis, pneumonia and scarlet fever declined dramatically. hospital infections, which previously amounted to a death sentence, have been cured in a few days.
Since the days of Fleming, researchers have developed dozens of other antibiotics, and the search for new types continues. During the last 60 years, antibiotics have become an indispensable weapon in the war against disease. If George Washington lived in our day, for sure doctors treat his sore throat with an antibiotic, and he probably would recover in about a week. Antibiotics have helped most of us to get rid of any infection. However, evidence shows that they also have their drawbacks.
Treatment with antibiotics is not effective in combating diseases caused by viruses such as HIV and influenza. In addition, some people are allergic to certain antibiotics. And drugs of broad spectrum of action can kill beneficial microorganisms in our body. But perhaps the greatest problem with antibiotics is the overuse and underuse them.
The divergence occurs when the patient stops treatment with antibiotics before the deadline determined by the doctor, because you feel better or think too long treatment. The result is that the antibiotic may not completely eliminate the invading bacteria, allowing resistant strains to survive and multiply. This has happened frequently in the treatment of patients with tuberculosis.
On the other hand, both medical and cattle ranchers have been blamed for overuse of these new drugs. “Antibiotics have been prescribed in excess in the United States and are used even more indiscriminately in many other countries,” explains the book Man and Microbes (Man and Microbes). “They have been administered in huge quantities to livestock, not to cure disease but to accelerate growth, and this is a major factor for the increased resistance of microbes.” The result, warns the book, is that “perhaps the time we have no new antibiotics to fall. “
But except for such questions about antibiotic resistance, the second half of the 20th century was a time of medical triumphs. Medical researchers seemed capable of finding drugs to fight practically any malady. And vaccines even made it possible to prevent diseases.
medicine victories
“Immunization is the greatest victory of public health at all times,” stated The World Health Report 1999 (Report on Health in the World 1999). Millions of lives have been saved thanks to mass vaccination campaigns worldwide. A global immunization program has eliminated smallpox — deadly disease that made more victims than all the wars of the 20th century together — and a similar campaign almost eradicated polio. (See the box “Victories over smallpox and polio.”) Today, many children are vaccinated to protect against common diseases potentially fatal.
Other diseases were controlled without calling much attention in the world. Waterborne diseases such as cholera rarely cause problems where there is adequate sanitation and drinking water supply. In many countries, the easier access to doctors and hospitals causes most diseases can be identified and treated before they become lethal. Other factors that have contributed to promoting public health are the eating habits and better housing, combined with compliance with the rules on the proper way to handle and store food.
After scientists discovered the causes of infectious diseases, health authorities could take practical steps to contain the spread of an epidemic. Here’s an example. In 1907 an outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco in the United States, killed few people because the city immediately launched a campaign to exterminate the rats’ hosts of fleas that transmitted the disease. That did not happen years ago in India, where an outbreak of the same disease began in 1896 and resulted in the death of 10 million people within 12 years because the transmitter agent had not yet been identified.
Losses in the fight against diseases
We saw clearly that important battles were won. But some public health victories were limited to the richest countries. Treatable diseases still kill millions of people, simply for lack of resources. In developing countries, many people still live in areas without adequate sanitation and lack access to health care or drinking water. Meet these basic needs has become more difficult due to the mass migration from the countryside to the megacities of the developing world. As a result of such factors, the world’s poor carry the World Health Organization called a “disproportionate share of the burden of disease.”
Selfishness, with its short-range view, is the main cause of this imbalance. “Some of the infectious diseases more deadly in the world seem distant,” states the book Man and Microbes. “Some of these are limited entirely or mainly to poor tropical and subtropical regions.” Since the developed countries and pharmaceutical companies may not benefit directly, they resist the idea of allocating funds for the treatment of such diseases.
Irresponsible human behavior also contributes to the spread of disease. There is no better example of this cruel reality of the HIV virus, which is transmitted from one person to another through body fluids. In a few years, the pandemic spread around the world. “The human beings themselves are responsible,” asserts epidemiologist Joe McCormick. “And say it is not moral, it is to be realistic.”
As man unwittingly cooperated with the AIDS virus? The book The Coming Plague lists the following factors: social changes — especially the habit of keeping multiple sexual partners — resulted in a wave of sexually transmitted diseases, making it much easier the virus and establish a carrier to infect many other people. The widespread use of contaminated syringes that are reused for injection of drugs in developing countries or for drug users, had a similar effect. The global blood industry, which moves $ 1 billion, also enabled the AIDS virus to pass from one donor to dozens of receivers.
As already mentioned, the overuse and underuse of antibiotics has contributed to the emergence of resistant microbes. The problem is serious and is getting worse. Staphylococci, bacteria that usually cause infection in wounds, were easily eliminated by penicillin derivatives. But now these traditional antibiotics have lost the effect in many cases. So doctors must turn to newer, expensive antibiotics that hospitals in developing countries can hardly get. Even the newest antibiotics may prove unable to combat some microbes, making it the most common hospital infections and more deadly. Dr. Richard Krause, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, US, described the current situation as “an epidemic of microbial resistance.”
“We are better off today?”
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we can see clearly that the threat of disease has not disappeared. The relentless advance of AIDS, the emergence of resistant pathogens to drugs and the return of old killers like tuberculosis and malaria show that the war on disease has not yet been won.
“We are better off today than we were a century ago?” Asked Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg Award. “In many ways, the situation is worse,” he said. “We have been negligent in dealing with microbes, and this is a recurring theme that is coming back to haunt us.” Do the current difficulties can be overcome if medical science and all nations of the world are struggling along these lines? Will the major infectious diseases will ultimately be eradicated, as smallpox was.
Victories over smallpox and polio
In late October 1977, the World Health Organization (WHO) tracked down the last known case of natural infection of smallpox. Ali Maow Maalin, cook a hospital in Somalia, contracted the mild form of the disease and recovered in a few weeks. All people who had contact with him were vaccinated.
For two long years, the doctors waited anxiously. It offered a reward of one thousand dollars to anyone who could report another confirmed case of smallpox active. There have been attempts, but no one could report a single case proven and earn the reward. So on May 8, 1980, WHO formally announced that “the world and all its people were free of smallpox.” Only a decade earlier, smallpox killed about 2 million people a year. For the first time in history, a major infectious disease had been eliminated.
Another disease that seems to be possible to eradicate polio is, or infantile paralysis. In 1955, Jonas Salk produced an effective vaccine against the disease, and immunization campaign against polio began in the United States and other countries. Later, he developed an oral vaccine. In 1988, WHO launched a worldwide program to eliminate the disease.
“When we began the eradication effort for her in 1988, polio paralyzed left more than a thousand children a day,” says Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, then director general of WHO. “In 2001, there was far less than a thousand cases during the entire year.” Polio is now confined to fewer than ten countries, although it needs more resources to help them eliminate the disease forever.
SIDA — the scourge of our times
The AIDS has emerged as the new global threat. About 20 years after its discovery, more than 60 million people have been infected. And health authorities warn that the AIDS pandemic is still in its “early stages.” The number of infected people is “rising faster than previously thought possible,” and are devastating the effects on regions of the world hardest hit.
“The vast majority of people with HIV / AIDS worldwide are in the most productive period of life,” says a UN report. As a result, it is believed that several countries of southern Africa will lose between 10% and 20% of the labor force by 2005. The report adds: “The average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is now 47 years. Without AIDS, it would have reached 62 years. “
Efforts to find a vaccine have been useless so far, and only 4% of 6 million AIDS sufferers in the developing world have access to drug therapy. There is still no cure for AIDS, and doctors fear that most virus carriers ending up finally developing the disease.
TB: it is estimated that over 30 million people will die of tuberculosis in this decade. Due to inefficient treatment of the disease in the past, drug-resistant TB is now a global threat. Some types are currently immune to drugs than before without fail destroy the bacteria.
Malaria: the disease afflicts 500 million people a year, killing 2 million. The control has been hampered by the lack or misuse of drugs, so that the malaria parasites have become resistant to drugs that once killed them. And mosquito insecticide resistance complicates the problem.
Cholera: kills 120,000 people a year, mostly in Africa, where epidemics have become more extensive and frequent. Unknown in South America for decades, cholera struck Peru in 1991 and since then, spreading throughout the continent.
Dengue: this virus transmitted by a mosquito afflicts some 20 million people a year. In 1995, the worst dengue epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean in 15 years, hit at least 14 countries there. Dengue epidemics increase because of the large growth of cities, the multiplication of the mosquito and the large displacement of infected people.
Diphtheria: mass immunization programs, which began 50 years ago, virtually eliminated the disease in industrialized countries. Since 1990, however, there have been diphtheria epidemics in 15 countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. One in four people who get the disease die. In the first half of 1995, about 25,000 cases were reported.
Bubonic plague: in 1995, at least 1,400 human cases were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). In the United States and other countries, the disease hit regions for decades did not reach.
