To understand the importance of zoonotic diseases and emerging/re-emerging diseases one must understand the definition of the terms. Zoonotic diseases “are caused by infections that are shared between animals and people” according to the CDC. “Emerging infectious diseases are those whose incidence in humans has increased in the past 2 decades or threaten to increase in the near future” as defined by the CDC. Re-emerging diseases are diseases that keep popping back up after it was thought that they were eliminated. An example of a zoonotic disease in history was that of the “black plague” or the bubonic plague. It was passed from pest (rats etc.) to person and killed an estimated 75 million people in a world of only about 350 million people, so it is clear to see how important/significant it is to stop or control the outbreak of these diseases. An example of an emerging/re-emerging disease is Nipah virus, Nipah virus persists to this day and seems to be difficult to control. It is especially deadly in more impoverished nations due to poor health care systems, around 3/4 of people who contract it die. It is important to monitor these diseases, so we can mitigate the effects they have on the world. An interesting social/cultural issue associated with the disease Ebola is that many parts of Africa are still uneducated on how to prevent/avoid Ebola and/or many people prefer “eastern” practices to treat/prevent Ebola. Many of the practices that are performed are not entirely grounded in science, so it is important that more privileged nations help with the transference of education on the topic of Ebola and other diseases in Africa.

With the increase of industrialization/globalization throughout most of the world it has made diseases much more easily transmissible due to things like airplanes, public transportation, and major cities to say the least. These different factors have made responding to new epidemics very difficult and increasingly more confusing/harder to figure out. Also, the concept of “outbreak culture” has not made it any easier to treat epidemics. Outbreak culture is defined in the book as “a collective mindset that develops among responders and communities in the initial response to disease outbreaks which can inhibit initial action and worsen the severity of an epidemic”. It is important that we change this toxic outbreak culture to more of a “collective mindset” where it can promote honesty and transparency because if we can change it, it will benefit the people that live in impoverished nations greatly by reducing deaths and overall increasing life expectancy in those nations.

On the topic of pandemic readiness, we are prepared for the next pandemic, but not entirely prepared as we could be. Many advances in science have increased preparedness for pandemic such as vaccines, anti-viral drugs, and global surveillance systems. Although we have the previously mentioned advancements, to be effective we need to develop more broadly effective tools to prevent and treat diseases, also we need to increase the surveillance of viruses in animals aka zoonotic diseases.

Help Received: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2018/10/how-outbreak-culture-can-hinder-infection-control/ CDC website, Powerpoint slides, Articles provided in class