GLOBAL IMPACT INFECTIOUS DESEASE
The Global Burden of Infectious Disease
It is clearly evidenced by the severity of the global impact on human lives and the financial burden to society that infection control measures are proving to be woefully inadequate. In addition, current antimicrobial products are contributing to the increasing worldwide threat from antimicrobial resistant organisms.
Statistics on Death Rates
?Today more than one quarter of all deaths worldwide are due to infectious disease.1
?Globally, infectious diseases rank as the second leading cause of death, over half of which are children under the age of 5.1
?Infectious diseases are the third leading cause of death in the United States. 1
?Infectious disease is the main cause of death among children 0-4 yrs old, with 63% of all deaths being attributed to infectious disease. 1
?Every three seconds a young child dies, in most cases from an infectious disease. 1
?Every day 3,000 people die from malaria; three out of four of these victims are children.
? Every year 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis, and another eight million are newly infected. 1
?Drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, killing about 19,000 people each year in the United States.
?According to the CDC, about 20 percent of those infected with MRSA die. In the European Union, more than three million people are infected each year, and tens of thousands die from the infections. 1
?According to a Red Cross report dated June 28, 2000 – “during 1999 the number of people who died from infectious diseases was about 160 times greater than the number who died in natural disasters.”
Emerging & Reemerging Diseases
?At least 30 previously unknown disease agents have been identified since 1973, including HIV, Ebola, hepatitis C, and Nipah virus, for which no cures are available.
?Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, many of which are likely to continue to originate overseas, will continue to kill at least 170,000 Americans annually. Many more could perish in an epidemic of influenza, or some other yet-unknown disease.
?The growing mobility of people, and popularity of airline transportation, has amplified the potential for disease to be transmitted to passengers not only during, but also before and after flights. 2
?In 1977, a strain of influenza (A/Texas) was transmitted to 72% of interviewed passengers and crew, all of whom became ill, from a single passenger who had developed flu symptoms
shortly after boarding the airplane.3
?TB will likely account for the overwhelming majority of deaths from infectious diseases in developing countries by 2020. 1
?TB killed 1.8 million people across the world in 2008, or one person every 20 seconds. It is not only a problem for less developed countries, but also in the West, where TB has virulently reemerged in the last 20 years.
?China currently has the world's second largest tuberculosis burden, India has the largest burden.
?Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states “We are all connected by the air we breathe, and that is why this must be everyone’s
problem.” 1
?In Cambodia, scientists have confirmed the emergence of a new drug-resistant form of malaria, threatening the only treatment left to fight a disease that already kills 1 million people each
year.
?In Africa, new and harder to treat strains of HIV are being detected in about 5 percent of new patients. HIV drug resistance rates have shot up to as high as 30 percent worldwide.
Hospitals
?Half of all patients in intensive care units around the world have infections, in 64 percent of these cases, the lungs were infected.
?In the United States at least 2 million people each year acquire a secondary infection from a hospital visit. 1
?100,000 people die each year in hospital from a secondary infection and NOT from their original complaint. This is equivalent to two jumbo-jet crashes every two days without any survivors.
?Researchers at Duke University in North Carolina stated: “surgical site infections due to MRSA led to charges in excess of $19 million for the group of study hospitals.” Furthermore "Surgical site infections due to MRSA led to a 7-fold increased risk of death, a 35-fold increased risk of hospital readmission, more than 3 weeks of additional hospitalization, and more than $60,000
of additional charges compared to uninfected controls."
?In the USA reimbursement for treating nonsurgical hospital-acquired infections is being eliminated. Recently, legislative elimination of payment for treating hospital-acquired surgical site infections has also been proposed.
Spread of Infections
?Infectious diseases are caused by pathogens. Pathogens are described as "any biological agent (otherwise known as a germ) that causes disease or illness to its host". Types of pathogens
include bacteria, viruses, and fungi.
?Infectious human viruses are almost always either airborne or spread by direct person to person contact. They are also transmitted through touching objects that have been infected with a virus.
?Bacteria “divide” every 20 minutes under optimal conditions.
?One bacterium is far too small to be seen without using a microscope. However, in just 12 hours, one bacterium could multiply to more than 8.5 billion!
? E. coli, salmonella and other bacteria can live up to two hours on surfaces.
?Hot water will not kill bacteria, only temperatures over 140 degrees can kill them.
?The influenza virus is viable for up to 24-48 hours on hard nonporous surfaces, like plastic, and stainless steel. They can be transferred to hands for up to 24hrs.
Bio Terrorism
?Disease-causing viruses and bacteria and their genetic material are the predominant materials and tools for genetic engineering.
?Newer techniques such as DNA shuffling, are allowing geneticists to create in a matter of minutes in the laboratory, millions of recombinant viruses that have never existed in billions of years of evolution.
?These new abilities to create novel (new) viruses and bacteria have the potential to be used for the intentional creation of bio-weapons.
?In 2001 a killer mouse virus was created in the course of an apparently “innocent” genetic engineering experiment.
FACTS
?The number of car accidents for 2005 in the USA was 6,420,000 (six million four hundred and twenty thousand) which resulted in 42,636 deaths. This is an average 0.66% mortality rate.
?The number of MRSA infections for 2005 in the USA was 94,000 which resulted in 18,650 deaths. This is an average mortality rate of 19.7% mortality rate.
You are 30 times more likely to die from a MRSA infection than a car accident.
?All of the wars of the twentieth century are estimated to have resulted in the deaths of 1.1 million combatants and civilians per year.
?Currently infectious diseases are killing 15.4 million people EVERY YEAR…this statistic is fourteen times the number of deaths from all the wars from the twentieth century - combined!
Nobel Laureate and microbiologist Joshua Lederberg, stated, “The future of humanity and microbes likely will unfold as episodes of a suspense thriller that could be titled Our
Wits Versus Their Genes.”
Remember Infection IS PREVENTABLE
Sources:
1. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC); The World Health Organization (WHO).
2. Mangili, A. and M. A. Gendreau (2005). Transmission of infectious diseases during commercial air travel. Lancet 365(9463):
989-96.
3. Airborne infections on commercial flights. AMA Council on Scientific Affairs. Report 10 June 1998. Accessed August 12,
2002.
4. Duke University in North Carolina study - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA infections associated with
surgery published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE