International spread of disease threatens public health security

[demoleft]

WHO report published today.

"In our increasingly interconnected world, new diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate, often with the ability to cross borders rapidly and spread. Since 1967, at least 39 new pathogens have been identified, including HIV, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, Marburg fever and SARS. Other centuries-old threats, such as pandemic influenza, malaria and tuberculosis, continue to pose a threat to health through a combination of mutation, rising resistance to antimicrobial medicines and weak health systems.

...

The report shows how and why diseases are increasingly threatening global public health security. High and rapid mobility of people is one factor. Airlines now carry more than 2 billion passengers a year, enabling people and the diseases that travel with them to pass from one country to another in a matter of hours. The potential health and economic impact was seen in 2003 with SARS, which cost Asian countries an estimated US$ 60 billion of gross expenditure and business losses."

The World Health Organization link to introduction and report: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2007/pr44/en/index.html

[mntleo2]

1. Crossing Borders?

...all over the nation is an un-treatable strain of TB running through hospitals. There is also a super-bug bacteria infection being carried through hospitals as well. It infests the face and other parts of the body in boil-like areas that can kill. The homeless population is also infected with both these infections because they have little access to healthcare. Few hospitals have isolation wards for the TB patients who have it as they are expensive to maintain. In homeless shelters, where they have to pack in hundreds because of the burgeoning homeless population with little resources, TB carriers cough and hack away all night lying inches above or next to a healthy person.

Petri dishes just waiting to infect us all. And the two germs I speak of have no antidotes because the germs have mutated to the point nothing works.

We need universal health care, if only for this reason. We also need permanent housing for the homeless. I am just waiting for a famous person to die of what low income people are suffering from every day. Maybe then something will be done. But it isn't just coming over the border from other places ~ it is right here under our noses, but nobody is talking about it.

Cat In Seattle

[porphyrian]

2. Good thing no one over-uses antibiotics, creating resistant strains...

...uh oh...