The Decline of Infectious Diseases

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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.

There are multifarious reasons for their resurgence. The health of the people are related with different direct facets such as use of foods, practices, medical care and indirect ones such as monetary cost, communication, international law, security, international relations etc. It is also important to know that these synthesize with each other. Food and business can be taken as an example. Today, because some of the largest multinational companies are heavily involved in the creation and marketing of unhealthy foods, the challenge to control diseases causing epidemics or pandemics has been quite formidable (Chopra, Galbraith, & Darnton, 2002). With changes in diet, particuaarly with the rise of people having processed food diabetes rates have of people having ...

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...University of North Carolina Press.

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