The recent outbreaks of certain viruses in Africa are a graphic reminder of how vulnerable mankind is to infectious diseases. Throughout the centuries, man’s greatest threat has often not been natural disasters or warfare, but the microscopic creatures with which we share the Earth. When epidemics break out, man has often been able to do little than let the epidemics run their deadly course. Has the threat disappeared or is it lurking in the background, waiting to strike again?
Media reports refer to a pandemic. What does pandemic really mean? It means a worldwide rather than just a local epidemic. In history, pandemics have resurfaced to haunt mankind at regular time intervals.
A long interval without epidemics brings complacency about new diseases. History records three great pandemics, (worldwide epidemics) in the past 2500 years — each ravaged nearly the whole of the inhabitated world.
Laurie Garrett, who won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Ebola Virus, wrote a bestseller on new diseases. In her recent book about the emergence of diseases such as Legionnaires disease, Aids, the Muerto Canyon Microbe, the Rwandan Cholera outbreak and others; she refers to opportunistic infections as ecological paybacks for our modern behaviour, flawed technology and the destruction of rain forests. Her conclusions cry out for our attention.
We tend to ignore history and tend to forget what happened only a few decades ago — we lack perspective. However, in this modern world, changing at ever increasing velocities, this attitude can be fatal. Yet, we still live with a Neolithic consciousness. Our sense of history is skewed and our understanding of the relative nature of threats is lacking. Because of this we are ill prepared to face the coming biological storm.
Throughout history, infectious diseases have been the great killer of humanity. Billions have perished, nations and entire cultures have been destroyed. Disease was the foundational terror of humanity. Infectious diseases are on the increase throughout the world. Pathogens are increasingly immune to current drugs and new drugs are no longer being developed. As a result, new pathogens are emerging due to human population growth and environmental degradation.
Nature continually throws challenges at human civilisation in the form of infectious diseases, the devastating diseases that periodically emerge remind us how thin is the veneer that separates our high-tech society from personal and community disaster. Most people assume that medical science will shield us from disasters in previous centuries. But the truth is that we are more vulnerable than we think that we are.
- The reader is a South African based in Johannesburg, South Africa
