# 4217
Although I began talking to the public about pandemic influenza more than 30 years ago as a paramedic and a representative of the county health department (see Deja Flu, All Over Again), along the way there have been other events in my life that have driven me to write about emerging infectious diseases.
In the late 1980s, about a decade after I left my career as a paramedic, I owned a computer programming and consulting service and wrote custom software with doctors and hospitals often as clients.
Among the software I produced was nosocomial infection tracking software. My paramedic training, and familiarity with medical terms and working in and around hospitals, no doubt led to getting those contracts.
In the decade I’d been away, concerns over disease prevention in hospitals had definitely soared. In the 1970s, doctors and nurses routinely worked without wearing gloves, even when drawing blood.
By the late 1980s, we’d entered the age of blood borne diseases (HIV & Hepatitis), and needle sticks and blood splashes took on new and serious dimensions.
In the early 1990s, long before it became `fashionable’, I was infected with Lyme disease (and went misdiagnosed, and therefore untreated for years) while building a golf course community.
Today, Lyme is regarded as the fastest growing emerging infectious disease in the country, but in 1990, it was still largely unknown.
I was fortunate enough to eventually meet, be treated by, and become friends with one of the best Lyme doctors in the country. A researcher and an M.D., he was generous with both his time and his knowledge, and sparked in me a renewed interest in infectious diseases.
As luck would have it, my 2nd wife’s cousin Ron was an epidemiologist for the State of New Mexico, and was integral in their investigation of Hantavirus and in their HIV program.
During the late 1990s, I spent a number of fascinating evenings talking to Ron about Lyme, AIDS and Hantavirus.
All three emerging zoonotic infectious diseases.
So I can claim to come by this blogging affliction honestly.
If you go back to the 1970s, it seemed as if we had all but conquered infectious diseases, at least in the developed world.
Polio, a scourge during my childhood, had been nearly eradicated in the US. We still saw occasional TB patients, but most of the TB hospitals around the country had been closed as antibiotics negated their need.
Childhood diseases, like mumps, measles and chickenpox all had vaccines and were becoming increasingly rare.
Other than pneumonia, and more mundane respiratory viruses like influenza, RSV, and rhinovirus . . . as a paramedic I rarely encountered infectious diseases.
The summer of 1976 was a bit of a turning point, however.
I was on the rubber chicken circuit, speaking to the Rotary, Moose, Elk, and any other civic organization, church, or school about pandemic influenza.
But in July of that year we suddenly began hearing about a mysterious ailment (which was first thought to be swine flu) at an American Legion Convention in Philadelphia.
It would take months before the agent was identified as a previously unknown bacteria (Legionella pneumophila), but during this outbreak more than 200 people were treated, and 34 deaths occurred.
For a while, Legionnaire's disease was a bigger story than the swine flu.
We now recognize that Legionella is the second most common cause of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia in the United States, with as many as 20,000 cases occurring annually.
Although the feared swine flu failed to return in the fall of 1976, the following year the H1N1 seasonal flu returned after a 20 year absence, causing what is today considered by some to have been a `Pseudopandemic’ in children.
Interestingly, the most plausible theory on how the H1N1 virus managed to stage a comeback involves an accidental release of the virus from a Russian or Chinese laboratory, since the virus was no longer believed to exist in the wild.
Hence, it was known as the `Russian Flu’, and joined H3N2 as co-circulating strains of seasonal flu in the ensuing years.
During roughly the same time period (mid-1970s) a new syndrome was identified in a cluster of children near Lyme, Connecticut with what was first thought to have been juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
Subsequent testing revealed infection with B. burgdorferi, a tick borne gram negative bacteria. Today, borreliosis – aka Lyme Disease – is associated with at least 3 types of bacteria belonging to the genus Borrelia.
The 1980s brought HIV, and a rise in hepatitis, along with the growing emergence of hospital acquired infections like MRSA and C. Difficle. MRSA was discovered in 1961, but didn’t really make a huge impact until the 1980s.
Hantavirus, Nipah, Hendra, and West Nile all followed in the 1990s, as have several avian influenza strains. And of course, the 2000’s brought us both SARS and Swine flu.
While not `new’ in the sense that they hadn’t existed before, these pathogens either jumped species, or emerged in areas where they’d never been detected previously.
All of which brings me, in a roundabout fashion, to an article that appears today in The Independent, written by their health editor Jeremy Laurance.
A look at the emergence of zoonotic infectious diseases, and their past and future impact on humanity. This is a pretty good read, and worth following the link.
Deadly animal diseases poised to infect humans
Environmental disruption set to trigger new pandemics, scientists warn
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
The world is facing a growing threat from new diseases that are jumping the human-animal species barrier as a result of environmental disruption, global warming and the progressive urbanisation of the planet, scientists have warned.
At least 45 diseases that have passed from animals to humans have been reported to UN agencies in the last two decades, with the number expected to escalate in the coming years.
Dramatic changes to the environment are triggering major alterations to human disease patterns on a scale last seen during the industrial revolution. Montira Pongsiri, an environmental health scientist at the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, says that previous transitions in human history have had a devastating impact in terms of the spread of disease.
"We appear to be undergoing a distinct change in global disease ecology. The recent emergence of infectious diseases appears to be driven by globalisation and ecological disruption," Dr Pongsiri said.
He and eight colleagues examined five emerging and re-emerging diseases – malaria, lyme disease (spread by ticks), Hantavirus (spread by mice and rats), West Nile disease (spread by mosquitoes), and schistosomiasis (spread by freshwater snails). They argue that changes in land use, farming practices and climate lie behind the increasing number of outbreaks.
The best known example of a disease that jumped the animal-human barrier and went on to cause a global pandemic is HIV, the virus that causes Aids. HIV is thought to have crossed from chimpanzees to humans in West Africa in the last century and more than 25 million people worldwide have since died from it.
