Presse Med
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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 cholera epidemic that hit Haiti from October 2010 to February 2019 was the world's deadliest of the last 25 years. Officially, the successive waves caused 9789 deaths, although numerous additional casualties could not be recorded. The origin of this epidemic has been the subject of a controversy involving two opposing theories. ⋯ Case-area targeted interventions aimed at interrupting cholera transmission were reinforced, which resulted in the extinction of the epidemic within two years. In the meantime, several phylogenetic studies on Vibrio cholerae during the seventh cholera pandemic demonstrated that local environmental and global epidemic Vibrio populations were distinct. These studies also showed that epidemics arose when the bacterium had diversified and that it had spread during transmission events associated with human travel.
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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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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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Smallpox is an ancient scourge known since the Antiquity. It is caused by a highly contagious airborne poxvirus. This strictly human disease exists in two forms: variola major (Asian smallpox) with mortality of 20-45%, and an attenuated form called variola minor or alatrim with mortality of 1-2%, which only recently appeared in Europe and America towards the end of the 19th century. ⋯ Using molecular approach, it has been discovered that the smallpox virus emerged 3000-4000 years ago in East Africa and is closely related to the taterapox virus from African gerbils and to the camelpox virus, which causes variola in camelids. Today, smallpox virus strains are stored in freezers at the CDC in Atlanta and at the Vector Center in Koltsovo, Siberia. That is why smallpox remains a potential threat to the highly susceptible human species, as a result of an accident or malicious use of the virus as a biological weapon.