Emerging diseases
Emerging diseases are defined as those diseases whose incidence has increased in the last few years or known diseases that are rapidly increasing in incidence or geographic range in the last 2 decades.
Re-emerging diseases
Re-emerging diseases are disease that have re-appeared and attracted public health attention after a significant decline in incidence. Reemergence may happen because of a breakdown in public health measures for diseases that were once under control. They can also happen when new strains of known disease-causing organisms appear. Human behavior affects reemergence.
Reasons why a disease could emerge or re-emerge.
There are several reasons why a disease can emerge or re-emerge. Some of these reasons include:
- Poor sanitation
- Overcrowding and rapid growth population
- Inadequate public health infrastructure
- Increased exposure of humans to disease vectors and reservoirs
- Resistance to antibiotics
- Increased indiscriminate use of antibiotics
- Increased number of serial partners
- Change in behaviour
- Previously undetected or unknown infectious agents.
- Known agents being spread to new geographic locations or new populations.
- Previously known agents whose role in specific diseases has previously gone unrecognized.
- people traveling more frequently and far greater distances than in the past,
- People living in more densely populated areas, People coming into closer contact with wild animals.
- HIV : It is thought that humans were first infected with HIV through close contact with chimpanzees, perhaps through bushmeat hunting, in isolated regions of Africa. It is likely that HIV then spread from rural regions into cities and then to various countries. Further factors in human behavior, such as intravenous drug use, sexual transmission, and transfer of blood products before the disease was recognized, aided the rapid and extensive spread of HIV.
- Chikunguya : The chikungunya virus, which is related to the virus that causes Dengue fever, causes Chikungunya sickness. It is spread by the tiger mosquito and was once only found in tropical areas near the Indian Ocean. More than 100 people of Ravenna, Italy, were sickened by a strange sickness that caused fever, tiredness, and severe bone pain in late summer 2007. The chikungunya virus was eventually identified as the source of the pandemic.
WHO Top priority diseases are:
- COVID-19 Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever
- Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease
- Lassa fever
- Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
- Nipah and henipaviral diseases
- Rift Valley fever
- Zika
- “Disease X”
Ways in which the disease can be controlled
- Control the reservoir
- Protect susceptible host
- Encourage research
- Put in place proper sanitation
- Encourage a multidisciplinary approach
- Creating awareness
- Reporting to appropriate authorities when there any outbreak and improve disease reporting system
- Rapidly detect unusual disease patterns
- Animal control
- Improve the public health system
Public health care Space 