Doctors urge global alert for emerging diseases
By Elif Kaban
GENEVA, April 6 (Reuter) - The world is facing a medical
crisis with frightening diseases of the past such as pneumonic
plague reemerging and new bacteria and viruses eluding modern
medicine, the U.N. health agency warned on Sunday.
Microbes are becoming resistant to antibiotic drugs, viruses
are mutating and changing hosts and diseases thought to have
been defeated are making a comeback in the age of jet travel,
slum cities and big population movements, the World Health
Organisation said.
In a message on the eve of World Health Day on Monday, WHO
director general Hiroshi Nakajima of Japan urged governments to
put more money into the fight against infectious diseases that
kill nearly 50,000 people a day and pose economic threats to
earnings from trade and tourism.
``Infectious diseases are with us. They respect no
frontiers. We must work together globally to control them,'' he
said.
Twentieth century doctors had hoped smallpox, plague and
malaria were subdued and that such diseases as typhoid, polio,
diphtheria, yellow fever and meningitis would soon join them.
But WHO said this smug sense of immunity had been proven
wrong by the reappearance of these diseases in many countries
and the emergence of 30 new infectious one with no known
treatment, cure or vaccine in the past two decades.
WHO says AIDS, which emerged as a worldwide threat in the
early 1980s, could affect nearly 30 million adults by 2000.
Mad cow disease may yet be another one in the making, as
well as its incurable human form, the brain-wasting
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
WHO blamed the rapid increase in air travel, growth of
mega-cities and inadequate safe water and sanitation for
mankind's failure to win its ancient war against disease.
In 1996, 2.5 billion people crossed international borders
aboard commercial flights. Another 25 million people have become
refugees and millions more are migrant workers living abroad.
``People in the West feel falsely secure in their homes. We
can't afford that anymore. We live in a world community,'' David
Heymann, a medical doctor at WHO's emergency disease unit, said.
``Man has now become a vector of disease from one continent
to another, just like insects.''
Environment was also to blame. Global warming helped malaria
to spread and floods fed the growth in rodent populations.
Doctors nervously tracking the travels of many microscopic
organisms around the world are wondering when diseases such as
influenza will strike again before new vaccines can be
developed.
``We're worried about a new strain of influenza,'' Heymann
said. ``When influenza strikes again, the human population will
not have much experience with it. It may kill many people.''
Heymann said bacteria and parasites were adapting, mutating
and developing resistance. Diphtheria was striking again in
Russia and Ukraine, yellow fever was spreading in Africa and
tuberculosis was making a resurgence in the United States.
``Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness,'' he said.
Ironically, Western medical advances are also busy creating
a world fit for microscopic organisms and not for humans.
The use of modern medicine for cancer and organ transplants
has led to an increase in the number of elderly and sick people
with poor immune systems, perfect conditions for bugs to thrive.
Heymann said resources in the West were being shifted away
from infectious diseases to chronic ones such as cancer and
heart attacks, the leading killers in rich nations.
``We do not know what awaits mankind,'' he said. ``The
minute we stop the surveillance, there is a risk of diseases
going up. We need to continue the fight.''
^REUTER@ |
