health and diseases: gateway 3

Question 1

what is an example of an emerging infectious disease?

Answer 1

SARS
- a disease with pneumonia-like symptomes
> began spreading from Guandong Province in southern China in November 2002
> was only identified as SARS only four months after it had started its spread
> the disease had already infected up to 350 individuals in 13 countries and 13 died

• the spread of the disease was contained in July 2003
  > final toll was 8 422 cases with 914 deaths
  > a slow response to early cases and the difficulty of identifying SARS had led to the outbreak of the pandemic

Question 2

what is an example of a re-emerging infectious diesase

Answer 2

• dengue fecer
  > commonly found in the tropical and subtropical zones
  > dengue fever is re-emerging in the USA with outbreaks reported from Hawaii to florida
  > in 2010, there were 1.6 million cases of dengue fever in USA