Infectious diseases are spreading at an unprecedented rate, according to a report by the World Health Organization released Thursday.
About 2.1 billion travelled around the world last year, spreading new communicable diseases at a historic rate of one per year. says there are about 40 new diseases from a decade ago that have been identified. Furthermore, WHO has verified more than 1,100 epidemic events around the world in the last five years.
"An outbreak or epidemic in any one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else," the report says.
WHO recommends countries do their part to curb the spreading of diseases by implementing updated health regulations. Complacency will result in a disastrous new infection comparable to AIDS, SARS or Ebola, officials warn.
"Instant electronic communication means that disease outbreaks can no longer be kept secret, as was often the case during the implementation of the previous International Health Regulations in 1969," the report says. "Governments were unwilling to report outbreaks because of the potential damage to their economies through disruptions in trade, travel and tourism. In reality, rumours are more damaging than facts.
"Trust is built through transparency, and trust is necessary for international cooperation in health and development."
In the report, WHO makes six key recommendations to countries to help stop the spread of disease:
- Countries should fully implement WHO's International Health Regulations, which was updated in 2005.
- Countries should alert the global community to outbreaks and should co-operate in surveillance and outbreak response.
- There should be global communication on knowledge, technologies and materials. This includes viruses and other laboratory samples.
- Countries should take responsibility to build their capacity within the public health infrastructure.
- All governments should consistently collaborate with one another
- There should be a global effort to increase global and national resources for training, surveillance, laboratory capacity, response networks, and prevention campaigns.
The report also identifies some of the human factors that have a significant impact on how disease is spread.
- Countries are not investing enough in their public health and falsely assume they are safe from risk especially when there are no reports of outbreaks.
- People are at risk when health policies change unexpectedly. There was a case in Nigeria where the government decided to temporarily halt immunization. That led to a polio outbreak.
- Living in conflicted or war-torn countries is detrimental to people's health as the conditions often force them to move into overcrowded, unhygienic and impoverished places. This only increases the risk of epidemics.
- The resistance of antibiotics as a result of evolving microbes.
