2000 Years of Pandemics

2000 Years of Pandemics PDF Author: Claudia Ferreira
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031100352
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This book analyzes the factors that have sparked pandemics over the past 2000 years, from the Antonine Plague to COVID-19. It is noteworthy that the frequency of pandemics has increased over the past 2000 years. The authors identify three main drivers for the development of pandemics: transportation, human development, and changes in natural ecosystems. It is important to note that with the advent of the industrial age, the length of time it takes for a pandemic to develop has decreased. COVID-19 is certainly not the last pandemic we will face. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to learn from the past 2000 years to help educate general community and public health officials about pandemic risks and help governments prepare for the next pandemic. The book is also very useful in low and middle-income countries where, in the last several decades, viruses with potential for pandemics have originated. It's comprehensiveness and didactic style make this book a valuable read for government health agencies, private organizations, health care professionals and students.

2000 Years of Pandemics

2000 Years of Pandemics PDF Author: Claudia Ferreira
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031100352
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book analyzes the factors that have sparked pandemics over the past 2000 years, from the Antonine Plague to COVID-19. It is noteworthy that the frequency of pandemics has increased over the past 2000 years. The authors identify three main drivers for the development of pandemics: transportation, human development, and changes in natural ecosystems. It is important to note that with the advent of the industrial age, the length of time it takes for a pandemic to develop has decreased. COVID-19 is certainly not the last pandemic we will face. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to learn from the past 2000 years to help educate general community and public health officials about pandemic risks and help governments prepare for the next pandemic. The book is also very useful in low and middle-income countries where, in the last several decades, viruses with potential for pandemics have originated. It's comprehensiveness and didactic style make this book a valuable read for government health agencies, private organizations, health care professionals and students.

The Threat of Pandemic Influenza

The Threat of Pandemic Influenza PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309095042
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

Learning from SARS

Learning from SARS PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309182158
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.

Flu

Flu PDF Author: Gina Kolata
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429979356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.

Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic: Voices from History

Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic: Voices from History PDF Author: Peter Furtado
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500776474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
An eye-opening anthology from the bestselling editor of Histories of Nations, exploring how people around the globe have suffered and survived during plague and pandemic, from the ancient world to the present. Plague, pestilence, and pandemics have been a part of the human story from the beginning and have been reflected in art and writing at every turn. Humankind has always struggled with illness; and the experiences of different cities and countries have been compared and connected for thousands of years. Many great authors have published their eyewitness accounts and survivor stories of the great contagions of the past. When the great Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta visited Damascus in 1348 during the great plague, which went on to kill half of the population, he wrote about everything he saw. He reported, "God lightened their affliction; for the number of deaths in a single day at Damascus did not attain 2,000, while in Cairo it reached the figure of 24,000 a day." From the plagues of ancient Egypt recorded in Genesis to those like the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages, and from the Spanish flu of 1918 to the Covid-19 pandemic in our own century, this anthology contains fascinating accounts. Editor Peter Furtado places the human experience at the center of these stories, understanding that the way people have responded to disease crises over the centuries holds up a mirror to our own actions and experiences. Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic includes writing from around the world and highlights the shared emotional responses to pandemics: from rage, despair, dark humor, and heartbreak, to finally, hope that it may all be over. By connecting these moments in history, this book places our own reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic within the longer human story.

The Plague Year

The Plague Year PDF Author: Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593320735
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Pandemics

Pandemics PDF Author: Christian W. McMillen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199340072
Category : MEDICAL
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Plague -- Chapter 2: Smallpox -- Chapter 3: Malaria -- Chapter 4: Cholera -- Chapter 5: Tuberculosis -- Chapter 6: Influenza -- Chapter 7: HIV/AIDS -- References -- Further Reading -- Index

Global Health and the Future Role of the United States

Global Health and the Future Role of the United States PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309457637
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
While much progress has been made on achieving the Millenium Development Goals over the last decade, the number and complexity of global health challenges has persisted. Growing forces for globalization have increased the interconnectedness of the world and our interdependency on other countries, economies, and cultures. Monumental growth in international travel and trade have brought improved access to goods and services for many, but also carry ongoing and ever-present threats of zoonotic spillover and infectious disease outbreaks that threaten all. Global Health and the Future Role of the United States identifies global health priorities in light of current and emerging world threats. This report assesses the current global health landscape and how challenges, actions, and players have evolved over the last decade across a wide range of issues, and provides recommendations on how to increase responsiveness, coordination, and efficiency â€" both within the U.S. government and across the global health field.

Paleomicrobiology

Paleomicrobiology PDF Author: Didier Raoult
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540758550
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This fascinating new volume comes complete with color illustrations and features the methodology and main achievements in the emerging field of paleomicrobiology. It’s an area research at the intersection of microbiology and evolution, history and anthropology. New molecular approaches have already provided exciting results, such as confirmation of a single biotype of Yersinia pestis as the cause of historical plague pandemics. An absorbing read for scientists in related fields.

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic PDF Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593534492
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.