GENEVA (AP) — Overuse of medicine, human settlement of uninhabited areas, international travel and poverty have combined to produce a devastating spread of infectious diseases, a new report says.
The report by the World Health Organization warns that the spread of untreatable forms of malaria and tuberculosis and the emergence of killers like AIDS and Ebola threaten to undermine recent advances in health care.
“We are standing on the brink of a global crisis in infectious diseases,” WHO Director-General Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima said.
The U.N. health organization issued the World Health Report 1996 as its week-long annual assembly begins Monday.
There is some good news.
Globally, life expectancy is now 65, three years higher than in 1985. Infant mortality has halved in 30 years to 60 deaths per 1,000 live births. Eight out of 10 children are immunized against killers like measles. Polio is on the verge of following smallpox into history. Leprosy, too, may soon become an evil of the past.
But overall, the 137-page report makes gloomy reading.
More than 50,000 people die every day — 17 million per year — from infectious diseases. And there is no respite in sight.
“During the past 20 years, at least 30 new diseases have emerged to threaten the health of hundreds of millions of people. For many of these diseases there is no treatment, cure or vaccine,” the report says.
AIDS was first identified in the early 1980s. More than 1 million people died of the disease last year. About 20 million adults are infected, according to WHO.
Ebola, a contagious hemorrhagic fever that surfaced in 1977 and reemerged to kill 245 people in Zaire a year ago, is another new disease. The hepatitis C virus, which causes liver cancer and was discovered in 1989, is another.
Diseases that have been around for centuries are popping up in incurable strains.
For instance, the two organisms that cause pneumonia — one of the biggest childhood killers — are increasingly resistant to drugs. The same is true of malaria and TB strains.
Other diseases — like cholera and yellow fever — are striking parts of the world that used to be considered safe, the report says.
The report attributed the upsurge to several factors.
Poverty and overcrowding provide ideal breeding grounds for harmful bacteria. Encroachment into previously uninhabited areas, especially jungles, is bringing humans into contact with new organisms, the report says.
Big population movements and international travel mean infections spread quickly. Many countries are reluctant to report dangerous diseases for fear of harming trade and tourism, making it more difficult to implement controls. In wealthy countries, overuse of medicines has weakened immune systems. In developing countries, the risk of serious illness increases because people don’t have the money to stick to a full course of antibiotics.