“Our failure to more deeply understand and more consistently attend to bigger issues leaves us, as they say along the fault lines in California, just waiting for the big one.” In the past few decades we have seen outbreaks of influenza, hantavirus, Ebola, monkey pox, anthrax, avian flu, and most recently, Zika, along with disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Citing the CDC, the WHO, Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Journal of Infectious Diseases, among others, Khan explores past outbreaks and disasters while weaving in his own narrative through facts and anecdotes. Ultimately, The Next Pandemic effectively argues that there must be long-term change in our infrastructure and how we handle our resources if we are going to prevent future …show more content…
Kahn worked in public health for twenty-five years, was an officer of the Epidemic Intelligence Service and a member of the US Public Health Service, and is a former director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since 2014, he has been the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska. During his time with the CDC, he encountered many cases-allowing him to provide his own unique perspective on epidemics and pandemics in recent history. He worked around the world encountering diseases like Ebola, SARS, MERS, got involved in the 2001 bioterrorism anthrax case in Washington DC, and was an initial public health responder after Hurricane …show more content…
While it is a nonfiction book and contains a healthy serving of scientific terms, The Next Pandemic also eases the reader into it by explaining the diseases and procedures in simpler terms and by providing relief from the science through personal stories of cooking halal in rural Congo, driving around Sierra Leone, and puzzling together clues to solve where an epidemic started, how to contain it, and how to prevent it from happening again. Khan equates national headlines about Ebola and Zika to canaries in a coal mine, arguing that they are only evidence of a larger problem with public health. By using familiar comparisons and raising alarm without causing panic, Khan brings awareness to the problems we face as a world in a memorable and factual
This Radiolab podcast talks about how the HIV/AIDS epidemic started: the ultimate patient zero story, a very recent event that still hurts and still bleeds.
Loo, Yueh-Ming and Michael Gale, Jr. “Influenza: Fatal Immunity and the 1918 Virus.” Nature 445 (2007): 267-268. 23 July. 2008 .
The influenza pandemic of 1918 had not only altered the lives of thousands, but the habitual lives of family and work as well. The Spanish Influenza collected more lives than all of the casualties of war in the twentieth century combined. After the disease had swept through the nation, towns that once began their days in lazy, comfortable manners had begun to struggle to get through a single day. What started as a mild neglect of a typical fever or case of chills had escalated and grown at an alarmingly rapid rate to be fearsome and tragic.
Europe from 1000 to 1300 was a place of prosperity and new opportunities. Due the introduction of the 3-field system and other changes brought to agriculture during this time, food was in surplus. This cerealization allowed for the support of a larger population, time for leisure activities, more money for luxury items, and specialisation of labour. Artisans, such as blacksmiths or bakers, formed guilds, lords and ladies held lovely parties, and the monarch ruled over the fruitful feudal society. Although the region flourished before the plague struck with its commercial revolution, and after with the Renaissance, the plague wrought devastation to the kingdoms within Europe from 1348 to 1351 through its exponential-like spread from city to
A pandemic is defined as a disease that has the ability to outbreak and spread globally. A pandemic is determined by how a particular disease spreads rather than how many lives it has claimed. A future pandemic can easily occur if and when a mutation of a new influenza A virus emerges. A pandemic of this type is easily possible to spread quickly and globally due to that when a new strand of the virus emerges, it will be highly unlikely that the human population will have a built up immunity to it.
The Center of Disease Control and Prevention has an emergency awareness and response page based off of a zombie apocalypse to help inform people on how they should be ready if a major emergency were to occur. The CDC has a range of research and information from heart disease to the worst, infectious, disease-causing agents. The CDC also shares information about how to prepare and what to do if a bioterrorism attack or pandemic were to occur. The Center of Disease and Control is a diversified government organization that has the main purpose of protecting the public against the serious threats of bioterrorism and dangerous pandemics.
A pandemic is an outbreak of an infectious disease that spreads through human populations across a large region, whether that be multiple continents or worldwide. In order to be considered a pandemic, a disease must cross international boundaries and be contagious or infectious. Pandemics are usually caused by a new virus strain that humans have either very little or no immunity against. This contagious virus spreads easily from person to person, through direct contact or coughing and sneezing. A serious illness is caused worldwide from the virus, wiping out entire populations. Some of the deadliest pandemics include the Black Death, the Spanish influenza, and the second cholera pandemic.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between twenty and forty million people. (1) Influenza is a virus that appeared in 1918 and caused a pandemic. It made an enormous impact that is still significant to the world today. It has pushed scientists to make advancements in the medicine and vaccination industry that continue to grow each and every day. Influenza may be a horrible thing, but without it we wouldn’t be where we are today.
Influenza is defined as an acute, commonly epidemic disease, occurring in several forms, caused by numerous rapidly mutating viral strains and characterized by respiratory symptoms and general prostration. Spanish flu was more than just a normal epidemic, it was a pandemic. Epidemics affect many people at the same time in areas where the disease doesn’t normally occur. A pandemic is an epidemic on a national, international, or global scale. The Spanish flu was different from the seasonal flu in one especially frightening way, there was an unusually high death rate among healthy adults aged 15 to 34 and lowered the life expectancy by more than ten years. Such a high death rate has not occurred in this age group in and epidemic prior to or since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. (Tumpey, 2005)
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 had a major effect on the public health in America at the time. Coordination between different levels and branches of government improved communication regarding the spread of influenza, improved the amount of people in hospitals, increased the spread of vaccines, and led to improvements in infection control and containment of the flu. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997248/).
Thesis Statement: The deadly virus Ebola is killing thousands of innocent people world wide, but there are some simple steps that are being taken to prevent this coming tide of death.
... CDC has also trained U.S. health care facilities to deal with Ebola emergencies, and communicate through the “Health Alert Network, the Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity, and a variety of existing tools and mechanisms (Office of the Press Secretary 2014)”. The Ebola epidemic helps remind the U.S. that other nations are there to work with them, and unite to prevent a rapidly growing disease. CDC partners with programs from other nations, such as the Global Disease Detection Centers, and the Field Epidemiology Training Program, which work to stop the Ebola virus. Information systems will grow stronger, more partnerships dedicated to stopping outbreaks will be formed, and laboratory security will also grow.
In the 1960s, doctors in the United States predicted that infectious diseases were in decline. US surgeon Dr. William H. Stewart told the nation that it had already seen most of the frontiers in the field of contagious disease. Epidemiology seemed destined to become a scientific backwater (Karlen 1995, 3). Although people thought that this particular field was gradually dying, it wasn’t. A lot more of it was destined to come. By the late 1980s, it became clear that people’s initial belief of infectious diseases declining needed to be qualified, as a host of new diseases emerged to infect human beings (Smallman & Brown, 2011).With the current trends, the epidemics and pandemics we have faced have created a very chaotic and unreliable future for mankind. As of today, it has really been difficult to prevent global epidemics and pandemics. Although the cases may be different from one state to another, the challenges we all face are all interconnected in this globalized world.
When looking back on history, it is evident to see that humans by nature are warriors. Humans often find themselves fighting mysterious battles against disguised enemies. Throughout history the earth has been afflicted with mysterious diseases, which tend to invisibly cause the preponderance of civilizations to perish. The evolution of infectious diseases has and always will provide challenges for humankind (Hoff, Smith, and Calisher 6-7). Over the course of time, humans gradually developed a preference to live in large urban settings. Urbanization and the cross-cultural interaction of civilizations have both strongly provoked widespread illness, which is known as an epidemic or pandemic based upon size. An epidemic is when a common disease affects a large number of people within a particular region (Lamb). A pandemic is similar to an epidemic but is even more widespread than an epidemic, and spreads throughout entire continents or even the world. Despite the slight variation in meaning, most pandemics are interchangeably denoted as epidemics (Friendlander 13-14). Epidemics and pandemics have formed the course of human history by inflicting lifestyle alterations and abruptly killing large masses of people. When one thinks of widespread disease it is easy to think that pandemics and epidemics are things of the past. Unfortunately, epidemics are commonly found today in poorer countries and major pandemics are still on the rise, such as the modern disease AIDS (Lampton 12-15). Nonetheless, epidemics and pandemics affect large portions of the world’s population; thus, these ongoing diseases will always influence the history of mankind because they force transformation amongst even the strongest civilizations.
Throughout human history disease has been linked to many facets of life and even the rise and fall of entire civilizations. Biological, social, political and economic forces have all influenced how the outbreak of disease is handled. Epidemics have altered history in how they have developed and the impact that they have had. In turn, epidemic management has been influenced by history and governments as humans have learned to cope with outbreaks and the social and political implications that result from them. Today, biomedical engineers, politicians, historians and social scientists are leading the battle in an attempt to understand and combat infectious diseases. This report will explore epidemic management and its historical relationship with the international political system. Issues will be investigated that range from the societal effects of epidemics, to observing today’s public policy debates regarding outbreaks to the possible reduction or even dissolution of conflict in exchange for food and medical technology between nations. Research has made it abundantly clear that humans must be vigilant in combating epidemics. By drawing on multiple disciplines, it is possible to implement a sound disease management plan that will control and reduce the spreading and mortality of infectious agents across the globe, as well as reduce tension and conflict between the developed and developing worlds.