29th August, 2007

Infectious diseases have been emerging at the unprecedented rate of one or more per year since the 1970s with 40 diseases having appeared that were unknown a generation ago, according to the annual health report from the World Health Organisation.

Released last week, the World Health Report 200 this year focuses on global public health security in the 21st century. It says that since 1967 at least 39 new pathogens have been identified including HIV, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, Marburg fever and SARS while older health threats, such as pandemic influenza, malaria and tuberculosis continue to pose a health threat through a combination of mutation, rising resistance to antimicrobial medicines and weak health systems.

It says that during the past five years WHO have identified more 1,100 epidemic events around the world and calls for a strengthening of capacity in assessing future threats such as those posed by global health scares such as SARS, avian influenza and emerging viral diseases like Ebola, Marburg haemorrhagic fever and Nipah virus.

“Given today’s universal vulnerability to these threats, better security calls for global solidarity,” says Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO. “International public health security is both a collective aspiration and a mutual responsibility.”

The report details how and why diseases are increasingly threatening global security - including the rapid and high mobility of people, with airlines, for example, now carrying more than two billion people a year - and calls for a range of co-operative actions to secure global health, including measures to combat pandemic influenza, which it says is “the most feared threat to health security in our times”.

~ www.who.int

- DAVID ADAMS