THE health of the world is threatened by old and new diseases, including plague, cholera, diphtheria and HIV, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
The potential for epidemics had increased considerably because of faster communications and the growth of urban populations, according to Dr Hiroshi Nakajima, director general of WHO.
Speaking in Washington yesterday, Dr David Heyman, director of the WHO division of emerging diseases, said: "An outbreak of Ebola near an airport could mean the disease is exported halfway across the world in a matter of hours."
Ebola haemorrhagic fever is very infectious and often fatal, with death occurring after eight or nine days. An outbreak in Zaire in April killed 245 people, 70 per cent of those infected. A quarter of them were health workers. The outbreak was said to be under control by August.
Newly-emerging diseases include Ebola, hepatitis C, HIV and Lyme disease. HIV now infects more than a million Americans and 18 million people worldwide.
Dr Heyman said: "The most worrisome aspect of these new diseases is their rate of increase - at least 29 new diseases have emerged in the past 20 years.
"It is clear that an outbreak of a disease anywhere must now be perceived as a threat to all countries and we are not yet fully equipped to contain them."
World reports of cholera show an increase of 454 per cent since 1990, amounting to 384,403 cases in 1994. Diphtheria is up 141 per cent (54,516 cases) in the same period.
In 1990 a diphtheria epidemic broke out in the former Soviet Union and 25,000 cases have been reported to the middle of this year. Other cases have been reported in Germany, Poland and Finland.
More than 2,000 cases of bubonic plague were reported in 1993 and 1994, the highest total since world records were started in 1954, costing India alone almost £1 billion.
Yellow fever has been reported for the first time for decades in Latin America. In 1992 there was an outbreak in the Rift Valley, Kenya. It had never been known before in Kenya.
Dengue fever is now commonly reported in Latin America and the Caribbean for the first time in 50 years. Tuberculosis, worldwide, is up nearly 30 per cent in 10 years to 1993.
Dr Heyman, whose unit was set up to provide a rapid response to news of outbreaks, says changes in lifestyle, including cities with populations outgrowing the supply of clean water, and "dramatic" increases in travel are key causes of the new health threats.
Complacency and deterioration of health surveillance programmes add to the risk.
"Unrecognised micro-organisms exist in nature that could cause diseases just as deadly as the Ebola virus and even more so."
