Human Populations at High Risk

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Recommended: chapter 26: infection disease prevention aand control

The human population has a high susceptibility to the contraction of new diseases and outbreaks of these diseases are of high risk. Diseases in recent times that have broken out into the human population are the H7N9 flu strain and SARS. Despite the risk, outbreaks like H7N9 and SARS have been controlled due to epidemiology and other disease control methods. Outbreaks of disease are not uncommon to the human population as they move to new areas around the world with foreign diseases that the native residents would have developed a resistance to.

The increase of population density over the past century due to an overall increase in population and the desire of many to live in major city centres. This population density has an adverse affect on the spread of infectious disease as the more people the larger amount of contact between individuals. Due to this increased contact it only takes one sick individual to spread a disease to potentially thousands through the transferal of microbes. A well known example that demonstrates just how quickly this can occur is the influenza virus. New strains of this virus are constantly emerging and the spread of these strains is aided by the close proximity of people living in cities. One of the latest flu strains to break out is the H7N9 a type of bird flu which broke out in china in the 2013 flu season. China has one of the highest population densities in the world and this is possibly the reason they see such a high rate of outbreaks. The H7N9 influenza strain infected 28 people and killed 8 in the first 9 days of the virus being recognized. Once the virus was tracked back to its source, a poultry market in shanghai, the outbreak was contained. The SIR model is used to track the spread of fl...

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...sease will spread to become an outbreak as it has a higher likelihood of spreading throughout the population before it is recognized as a new disease and treatment has begun. Factors such as high population density, high speed air travel and antibiotic resistance aid the spread of the disease and contribute to it becoming an outbreak. Epidemiology and other safety measures aid in the protection of the population from outbreaks of disease and alter the susceptibility of the human race to outbreaks of disease.

Bibliography

1. Shiflet, A,B, Shiflet, G,W, Spartanburg, S,C, et. al. 2003. ‘Spread of SARS’

2. Ruan, S, Wang, W, Levin, S,A, et. al. 2006. ‘The Effect of Global Travel on the Spread of SARS’ Mathematical Biosciences and engineering 3: 205-218

3. Hvistendahl, M, Cohen, J et. al. 2013. ‘New Flu Virus in China Worries and Confuses’ Science 340: 129-130

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