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Map of zoonotic emerging infectious diseases. Number of zoonotic EID events:  |
Is the world becoming sicker or are we just better able to detect disease? The last decades have seen dramatic improvements in biological disease detection with dozens of new potential pathogens anticipated by 2020. At the same time innovations in information management are increasing awareness of disease outbreaks. Perry et al. (2011)1 explore this in a recent review and conclude that there is overall evidence for increased emergence of disease in recent decades, and not just improvements in diagnosis and surveillance. The current increase in disease emergence is not historically unprecedented: major epidemiological transitions also occurred during the Neolithic when livestock were domesticated on a wide-scale, during the age of exploration when Old World pathogens were introduced to the New World, and to a lesser extent with increased global travel in the nineteenth century).
- Perry, B.D., Grace, D. Sones, K., 2011. Current drivers and future directions of global livestock disease dynamics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 16 May 2011. doi 10.1073/pnas.1012953108 [↩]
More people = more illness.
I think the truth is in the middle. We’re subject to more diseases because we’re not so connected with nature and at the same time we know many diseases unknown in days of old.
We live closer together, travel faster, keep our sick alive longer, we are all six degrees of separation from any sick animal, we eat less protective diets which nonethless offer better nutrition to pathogens (iron and niacin and folate added to concentrated carbohydate), we often avoid cleansing sunlight, we’re wiping out our friendly commensals.
We’ve become a teeming petrie dish of opportunity.
The wonder is that our major epidemics have been relatively slow-burning (HIV, HCV) so far.
As a ghost writer said, the more people live in one place, the faster illnesses are spread. Just have a look at the map. New York, London, European capitals. It is the main places. Even though these cities are considered to have the highest rate of helth care, the number of people contacts lead to the epidemics growth.