Presse Med
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Tuberculosis (TB), known as the White Plague' is of great significance to humanity for the magnitude of morbidity and mortality it has generated over centuries from the very start of human civilization. In this Review, we will describe the history of prevention (vaccination and management of TB infection), diagnosis, treatment and pulmonary rehabilitation of post-treatment sequelae. The article leads the reader through the main discoveries which paved the way to the modern approach to TB prevention and care. ⋯ Pivotal was in 1882 the discovery by Robert Koch of the aetiological agent of TB, and his pioneering work in culturing the bacillus and developing tuberculin. Also of enormous importance was, in 1895, the discovery of the X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, discovery which paved the way to the development of the modern imaging technologies. To complement this, the more recent history of rehabilitation of post-treatment sequelae is summarized, given the importance this issue has on patients' wellbeing and Quality of Life.
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For millions of years, invertebrates and malaria parasites have coexisted and to date, malaria remains the most important human parasitic disease. This co-evolution had profound impacts on the movements of early hominids and on the genome of modern humans. ⋯ Over recent years the economic and social costs of malaria have been recognized and more funds have been mobilized than ever before, however further efforts are needed. National programs, international institutions and researchers will need to do better if the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of mostly African children are to be averted.
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The Covid-19 pandemic appeared in China in December 2019 as a cluster of transmissible pneumonia caused by a new betacoronavirus. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a pandemic. Covid-19 is a mild infection in 80% of cases, serious in 15% and critical in 5%. ⋯ The second has been favored in critical periods such as April 2020, when 2.5 billion people throughout the world were confined. Vaccination campaigns got underway at the end of December 2020 and progressed without reaching sufficient herd immunity, leading some nations to consider compulsory vaccination or to require a vaccine or health pass, in order for persons to access different activities. Will the pandemic stop with Omicron and become endemic? This part of the Covid-19 story remains to be told.
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The Spanish flu occurred at the end of the First world war, in disastrous epidemiological conditions on populations exhausted by four years of war. At that time, there were no vaccines, no antibiotics, no oxygen and no resuscitation. It was even thought that the infectious agent was a bacterium. ⋯ The high mortality in the 20-40 age group remains an enigma. Some experts point to reduced immune response in patients previously exposed to related viral hemagglutinins during the 1889 pandemic. In any event, even though it concerns a markedly different virus, the history of the Spanish flu sheds light on the difficulties of management during today's pandemic.
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Yellow fever is a zoonotic arbovirosis, the agent of which is transmitted by mosquitoes. In humans, this virus can cause hemorrhagic hepato-nephritis, while mild or inapparent infections are common. The catastrophic epidemics that occurred, mainly in the 18th and the 19th centuries, in Latin America and the United States as well as in the port cities of West Africa and Europe, had considerable demographic, socio-economic and political repercussions. ⋯ Risks of epidemics reappeared, in Latin America as well as Africa. In the early 21st century, epidemiologists are worried about these resurgences, especially since we still have no indisputable explanation for the absence of the disease on the Asian continent. Obviously, yellow fever is not a disease of the past.