Infectious Diseases

New and reemerging infectious diseases will pose a rising global health threat and will complicate US and global security over the next 20 years. These diseases will endanger US citizens at home and abroad, threaten U.S. armed forces deployed overseas, and exacerbate social and political instability in key countries and regions in which the United States has significant interests.

The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States,
National Intelligence Estimate, January 2000

Infectious disease can influence the security, economy, and humanitarian conditions within a country and the international community. Disease does not recognize national borders, and, as the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) demonstrated, travelers can quickly and unknowingly introduce novel diseases into countries previously unaffected. Infectious disease can exact enormous national and international economic consequences, with negative impacts on trade, travel, and tourism.

The SARS outbreak cost Asian economies between $11 and $18 billion, resulting in a GDP loss of between 0.5% and 2%. Unanticipated emergence or re-emergence of other infectious diseases such as pandemic influenza could exact a far higher toll, both human and economic.

While 800 people died in the SARS outbreak, the next flu pandemic could cause over seven million deaths worldwide.* With the recent widespread outbreak of avian influenza in birds in Asia, conditions are increasingly favorable for the start of such a pandemic. Severe financial losses resulting from such an outbreak would undoubtedly destabilize the international economic system, and thereby compromise national interests.

Other diseases requiring national and international attention include polio, Ebola, yellow fever, plague, measles, the West Nile virus, and dengue fever.

Strong public health systems within countries, to include strong surveillance and response mechanisms, are vital to curb the spread of disease and to warn of new disease outbreaks.

_______________
* World Health Organization. Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response. WHO consultation on priority public health interventions before and during an influenza pandemic. March 2004.

Related Links

• President's Malaria Coordinator
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID)
• National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
• U.S. Department of State (DoS) Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator
• CDC Traveler's Health
• Global Public Health Information Network (GPHIN)
• Johns Hopkins, Infectious Diseases
• Health Canada, Infectious Diseases News Brief
• International Society for Infectious Diseases, ProMED-mail
• World Health Organization, Pandemic Preparedness

--05/01/07  Can Polio Be Eradicated?; Kent Hill, Assistant Administrator for Global Health U.S. Agency for International Development; Remarks to he Center for Strategic and International Studies; Washington, DC
--05/01/07  Finishing the Global Fight Against Polio; Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Remarks to Center for Strategic and International Studies; Washington, DC
--02/28/07  Eradication vs. Control: Comparing the Burden of Polio if Milestones Are Not Achieved; Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Remarks to the WHO Urgent Stakeholder Consultation on Global Polio Eradication; Washington, DC