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pan·dem·ic (păn-dĕm'ĭk)  |
[From Late Latin pandēmus, from Greek pandēmos, of all the people : pan-, pan- + dēmos, people.]
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Bird flu is highly likely to become the first pandemic of the 21st century, US Health and Human Services Secretary
"Leavitt said there were three influenza pandemics in the past century and 'the likelihood of another is very high, some say even certain.'"
Link: Chances of flu pandemic are 'very high,' Leavitt says
Posted October 11, 2005.
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| World of the Body: pandemics |
infectious diseases and their causal organisms survive alongside mankind in the relationship of parasite and host, and in stable, populous societies achieve an equilibrium in which acquired immunities in the settled population mitigate the worst ravages of the infections. Pandemics, by contrast, occur when an infection escapes from its endemic habitat to reach populations without a specific acquired immunity. By definition, pandemics are distinct from epidemics: they sweep out to affect a whole country, or one or more continents, or the whole world. Epidemics may involve a much smaller community — one family; a school; or a village, town, or county. Pandemics may thus be characterized as epidemic disasters, involving disease and usually death on a massive scale.
Early pandemics
While new infectious diseases emerge from time to time as a result of human contact with normally elusive animal reservoirs of disease (Lassa fever, for example, was discovered in 1973 to have originated among rodents in Nigeria), they require special circumstances of human activity to achieve pandemic status. Human mobility — notably migration and warfare, but also exploration, travel, and trade — has played a key role in past pandemics. It is likely that pandemics have occurred periodically since the establishment of the earliest civilized, urban societies between 3000 and 500 bc, but the surviving historical records do not permit conclusive distinctions between pandemics and epidemics until late in human history. It is clear, however, that epidemic disaster struck the Roman Empire in ad 165-80, and again in ad 251-66, with an unidentifiable infection breaking out in different cities year by year, and sometimes returning. It is possible that one or both of these pandemics were due to smallpox, or even measles.
Smallpox was (the WHO declared it eradicated in 1977) a very ancient scourge related to, and possibly deriving from, one of the various animal poxes. It may have originated in India, where ancient temples still survive to Sitala, the Hindu goddess of smallpox, and where smallpox in recent times retained very much the character of an endemic disease. One attack of smallpox conferred a lifelong immunity, which permitted it eventually to establish itself as an endemic disease in the urban societies of Europe and elsewhere. It was one of the disease which, imported into the Americas by Spaniards in the fifteenth century, caused terrible devastation among the native populations, and facilitated the European conquest.
The best attested pandemics belong to relatively recent history, and to three diseases in particular: bubonic plague, cholera, and influenza. Bubonic plague, which devastated medieval and early modern Europe with successive pandemics between 1346 and the early eighteenth century, caused alarm worldwide with another pandemic between 1894 and 1900. The Black Death of 1346-50 remains the classic pandemic of popular memory.
Cholera
Since bubonic plague, cholera in the nineteenth century, and influenza in 1918, have both achieved classic pandemic status, even though their full horror has not remained in popular memory. Cholera, like smallpox, has its natural home in India, in the delta of the Ganges river. The cholera bacillus is extremely sensitive to heat and humidity, but can survive almost indefinitely where the conditions are right. In the early nineteenth century, the activities of British traders and troops in India led to its breaking out of its historic heartland in the Ganges delta, and moving beyond its established epidemic hinterland in India and neighbouring areas. Between 1817 and 1823, travelling both by land and by sea, the disease reached out through south-east Asia, China, and Japan, and through Arabia to Africa, the Persian Gulf, and southern Russia, before being cut short, perhaps by the very severe winter of 1823-4. The rapid development of trade and travel at this period ensured further pandemics of increasing geographical range.
Cholera infection is spread by food and water via the faecal-oral route, and is especially explosive when it enters a widely-distributed water supply. In the great, insanitary cities of newly industrializing Europe and America, opportunities for infection were legion. Six pandemics of cholera swept out of India between 1817 and 1923: 1817-23, 1826-37, 1846-62, 1864-75, 1883-94, and 1899-1923. The second pandemic was perhaps the most severe, with succeeding pandemics having a more variable global impact. Britain, for example, as a result of improved surveillance systems and public health reform, experienced no epidemic after 1866, while the 1866 epidemic was largely centred on London, and in particular in the water field of the East London Water Company, which had distributed contaminated supplies.
Cholera's ability to travel the nineteenth-century world was the result both of military activity and of the human and commercial interests which impelled ever-increasing numbers of people to travel or to migrate long distances. The disease regularly travelled the long-established trade-route across Russia, for example, and the 1893 epidemic at Hamburg was introduced by Russian Jews fleeing from persecution at home to a new life in the US, and who sought to travel on the regular migrant ships that sailed out of Hamburg port.
Both cholera and bubonic plague are example of diseases whose pandemic potential was eventually broken by patient observation and public health responses. Although it is likely that the cessation of plague pandemics was multicausal, the transmission routes of both diseases made them relatively susceptible to public health interventions. Infections which spread by direct contact, or the respiratory route, present a more serious challenge to human societies. The great influenza pandemic of 1918-9 illustrates the potential which such infections still have to devastate human populations.
Influenza
Influenza assumes many degrees of severity. It is caused by a notoriously unstable virus, which spreads with great speed and facility, and leaves only a brief immunity. Although it is another old disease, and although the evidence suggests some sixteen pandemics between c.1100 and 1900, on the scale of global epidemic problems it was not highly rated by public health authorities before 1918. The pandemic of 1918-9 was a very different matter: with a death toll of more than 21 million persons worldwide, it was quite simply the worst disease pandemic ever experienced by human populations — a human catastrophe equalled only by the carnage of World War II. The disease strain was a particularly virulent one, and was especially lethal to young adults in the age group 20-40, although no age group was immune. Originating in America in the spring of 1918, the disease was rapidly disseminated through Europe by American troops arriving in support of the Allied armies for the final offensive against Germany, only assuming its extreme lethal character in the autumn of that year. In the climax of local outbreaks, public services broke down entirely, medical services were unable to cope with the numbers of sick and dying, and burial services were overwhelmed by the number of bodies needing interment. Those who survived often acknowledged it as one of the most profound experiences of their lives. The American writer Katharine Anne Porter spoke for many when she said of it that ‘It just simply divided my life, cut across it like that.’
Sexually transmitted diseases
The airborne nature of influenza gave the 1918 pandemic its peculiarly immediate, universal, and devastating quality. The global pandemic of HIV infection which has spread out of the US since 1980 has less of this character and more in common with the pandemic of syphilis, which spread across Europe in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and whose initial characteristics were far more florid and alarming than those which it has subsequently manifested as an endemic disease. Both HIV and syphilis are essentially sexually-transmitted diseases, slower in manifestation and spread than airborne influenza. Nevertheless, the relatively rapid global spread of HIV as the result not only of late twentieth-century sexual mores but also of the ease and speed with which humans travel across the globe, taken together with the experience of 1918, affords some indication of the likely devastation should another lethal airborne — or easily transmitted — infectious disease acquire pandemic impetus.
— Anne Hardy
Bibliography
See also epidemics; infectious diseases.
| Thesaurus: pandemic |
adjective
| Dental Dictionary: pandemic |
Describing an epidemic covering a widespread area such as a country or continent. It can describe a global epidemic.
| Health Dictionary: pandemic |
A widespread epidemic affecting a large part of the population.
| Veterinary Dictionary: pandemic |
A widespread epidemic, i.e the disease is clustered in time but not in space.
| Word Tutor: pandemic |
There was a pandemic flu virus last year.
| Wikipedia: Pandemic |
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This article's introduction section may not adequately summarize its contents. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (April 2009) |
A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" + δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics exclude seasonal flu[citation needed][why?]. Throughout history there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. More recent pandemics include the HIV pandemic and the 2009 flu pandemic.
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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a pandemic can start when three conditions have been met:[1]
A disease or condition is not a pandemic merely because it is widespread or kills many people; it must also be infectious. For instance, cancer is responsible for many deaths but is not considered a pandemic because the disease is not infectious or contagious.
In a virtual press conference in May 2009 on the influenza pandemic Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General ad Interim for Health Security and Environment, WHO said "An easy way to think about pandemic ... is to say: a pandemic is a global outbreak. Then you might ask yourself: “What is a global outbreak”? Global outbreak means that we see both spread of the agent ... and then we see disease activities in addition to the spread of the virus."[2]
In planning for a possible influenza pandemic the WHO published a document on pandemic preparedness guidance in1999, revised in 2005 and during the 2009 outbreak, defining phases and appropriate actions for each phase in an aide memoire entitled WHO pandemic phase descriptions and main actions by phase[3]. All versions of this document refer to influenza. The phases are defined by the spread of the disease; virulence and mortality are not mentioned.
The 2009 outbreak of a new strain of Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 created concerns that a new pandemic was occurring. In the latter half of April, 2009, the World Health Organization's pandemic alert level was sequentially increased from three to five until the announcement on 11 June 2009 that the pandemic level had been raised to its highest level, level six.[4] This was the first pandemic on this level since 1968. Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), gave a statement on 11 June 2009 confirming that the H1N1 strain was indeed a pandemic, having nearly 30,000 confirmed cases worldwide.
HIV went directly from Africa to Haiti, then spread to the United States and much of the rest of the world beginning around 1969.[5] HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is currently a pandemic, with infection rates as high as 25% in southern and eastern Africa. In 2006 the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women in South Africa was 29.1%.[6] Effective education about safer sexual practices and bloodborne infection precautions training have helped to slow down infection rates in several African countries sponsoring national education programs. Infection rates are rising again in Asia and the Americas. AIDS could kill 31 million people in India and 18 million in China by 2025, according to projections by U.N. population researchers.[7] AIDS death toll in Africa may reach 90-100 million by 2025.[8]
There have been a number of significant pandemics recorded in human history, generally zoonoses which came about with domestication of animals, such as influenza and tuberculosis. There have been a number of particularly significant epidemics that deserve mention above the "mere" destruction of cities:
Encounters between European explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. Disease killed the entire native (Guanches) population of the Canary Islands in the 16th century. Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors.[26] Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 1600s. In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans.[27] During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the Pacific Northwest Native Americans.[28] Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians.[29] Some believe that the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza.[30] Over the centuries, the Europeans had developed high degrees of immunity to these diseases, while the indigenous peoples had no such immunity.[31]
Smallpox devastated the native population of Australia, killing around 50% of Indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation.[32] It also killed many New Zealand Māori.[33] As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza. Introduced diseases, notably smallpox, nearly wiped out the native population of Easter Island.[34] In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population.[35] The disease decimated the Andamanese population.[36] Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part to infectious diseases brought by Japanese settlers pouring into Hokkaido.[37]
Researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus' voyages. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions of Europe.[38] The disease was more frequently fatal than it is today. Syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance.[39] Between 1602 and 1796, the Dutch East India Company sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia. Ultimately, only less than one-third made their way back to Europe. The majority died of diseases.[40] Disease killed more British soldiers in India than war. Between 1736 and 1834 only some 10% of East India Company's officers survived to take the final voyage home.[41]
As early as 1803, the Spanish Crown organized a mission (the Balmis expedition) to transport the smallpox vaccine to the Spanish colonies, and establish mass vaccination programs there.[42] By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans.[43] From the beginning of the 20th century onwards, the elimination or control of disease in tropical countries became a driving force for all colonial powers.[44] The sleeping sickness epidemic in Africa was arrested due to mobile teams systematically screening millions of people at risk.[45] In the 20th century, the world saw the biggest increase in its population in human history due to lessening of the mortality rate in many countries due to medical advances.[46] The world population has grown from 1.6 billion in 1900 to an estimated 6.7 billion today.[47]
Typhus is sometimes called "camp fever" because of its pattern of flaring up in times of strife. (It is also known as "gaol fever" and "ship fever", for its habits of spreading wildly in cramped quarters, such as jails and ships.) Emerging during the Crusades, it had its first impact in Europe in 1489, in Spain. During fighting between the Christian Spaniards and the Muslims in Granada, the Spanish lost 3,000 to war casualties, and 20,000 to typhus. In 1528, the French lost 18,000 troops in Italy, and lost supremacy in Italy to the Spanish. In 1542, 30,000 soldiers died of typhus while fighting the Ottomans in the Balkans.
During the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), an estimated 8 million Germans were wiped out by bubonic plague and typhus fever.[72] The disease also played a major role in the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée in Russia in 1812. Felix Markham thinks that 450,000 soldiers crossed the Neman on 25 June 1812, of whom less than 40,000 recrossed in anything like a recognizable military formation.[73] In early 1813 Napoleon raised a new army of 500,000 to replace his Russian losses. In the campaign of that year over 219,000 of Napoleon's soldiers were to die of typhus.[74] Typhus played a major factor in the Irish Potato Famine. During the World War I, typhus epidemics have killed over 150,000 in Serbia. There were about 25 million infections and 3 million deaths from epidemic typhus in Russia from 1918 to 1922.[74] Typhus also killed numerous prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and Soviet prisoner of war camps during World War II. More than 3.5 million Soviet POWs died in the Nazi custody out of 5.7 million.[75]
Smallpox is a highly contagious disease caused by the Variola virus. The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans per year during the closing years of the 18th century.[76] During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths.[77][78] As recently as early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year.[79] After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979. To this day, smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated.[80]
Historically, measles was very prevalent throughout the world, as it is highly contagious. According to the National Immunization Program, 90% of people were infected with measles by age 15. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, there were an estimated 3-4 million cases in the U.S. each year.[81] In roughly the last 150 years, measles has been estimated to have killed about 200 million people worldwide.[82] In 2000 alone, measles killed some 777,000 worldwide. There were some 40 million cases of measles globally that year.[83]
Measles is an endemic disease, meaning that it has been continually present in a community, and many people develop resistance. In populations that have not been exposed to measles, exposure to a new disease can be devastating. In 1529, a measles outbreak in Cuba killed two-thirds of the natives who had previously survived smallpox.[84] The disease had ravaged Mexico, Central America, and the Inca civilization.[85]
One–third of the world's current population has been infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and new infections occur at a rate of one per second.[86] About one in ten of these latent infections will eventually progress to active disease, which, if left untreated, kills more than half of its victims. Annually, 8 million people become ill with tuberculosis, and 2 million people die from the disease worldwide.[87] In the 19th century, tuberculosis killed an estimated one-quarter of the adult population of Europe;[88] and by 1918 one in six deaths in France were still caused by TB. By the late 19th century, 70 to 90% of the urban populations of Europe and North America were infected with M. tuberculosis, and about 40% of working-class deaths in cities were from TB.[89] During the 20th century, tuberculosis killed approximately 100 million people.[82] TB is still one of the most important health problems in the developing world.[90]
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s Disease, is caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. It is a chronic disease with an incubation period of up to five years. Since 1985, 15 million people worldwide have been cured of leprosy.[91] In 2002, 763,917 new cases were detected. It is estimated that there are between one and two million people permanently disabled because of leprosy.[92]
Historically, leprosy has affected mankind since at least 600 BC, and was well-recognized in the civilizations of ancient China, Egypt and India.[93] During the High Middle Ages, Western Europe witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of leprosy.[94][95] Numerous leprosaria, or leper hospitals, sprang up in the Middle Ages; Matthew Paris estimated that in the early 13th century there were 19,000 across Europe.[96]
Malaria is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Each year, there are approximately 350–500 million cases of malaria.[97] Drug resistance poses a growing problem in the treatment of malaria in the 21st century, since resistance is now common against all classes of antimalarial drugs, with the exception of the artemisinins.[98]
Malaria was once common in most of Europe and North America, where it is now for all purposes non-existent.[99] Malaria may have contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.[100] The disease became known as "Roman fever".[101] Plasmodium falciparum became a real threat to colonists and indigenous people alike when it was introduced into the Americas along with the slave trade. Malaria devastated the Jamestown colony and regularly ravaged the South and Midwest. By 1830 it had reached the Pacific Northwest.[102] During the American Civil War, there were over 1.2 million cases of malaria among soldiers of both sides.[103] The southern U.S. continued to be afflicted with millions of cases of malaria into the 1930s.[104]
Yellow fever has been a source of several devastating epidemics.[105] Cities as far north as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were hit with epidemics. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed as many as 5,000 people in Philadelphia—roughly 10% of the population.[106] About half of the residents had fled the city, including President George Washington. Approximately 300,000 people are believed to have died from yellow fever in Spain during the 19th century.[107] In colonial times, West Africa became known as "the white man's grave" because of malaria and yellow fever.[108]
There are also a number of unknown diseases that were extremely serious but have now vanished, so the etiology of these diseases cannot be established. The cause of English Sweat in 16th-century England, which struck people down in an instant and was more greatly feared than even the bubonic plague, is still unknown.
Some Viral Hemorrhagic Fever causing agents like Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus and Bolivian hemorrhagic fever are highly contagious and deadly diseases, with the theoretical potential to become pandemics. Their ability to spread efficiently enough to cause a pandemic is limited, however, as transmission of these viruses requires close contact with the infected vector, and the vector only has a short time before death or serious illness. Furthermore, the short time between a vector becoming infectious and the onset of symptoms allows medical professionals to quickly quarantine vectors, and prevent them from carrying the pathogen elsewhere. Genetic mutations could occur, which could elevate their potential for causing widespread harm; thus close observation by contagious disease specialists is merited.
Antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, sometimes referred to as "superbugs", may contribute to the re-emergence of diseases which are currently well-controlled. For example, cases of tuberculosis that are resistant to traditionally effective treatments remain a cause of great concern to health professionals. Every year, nearly half a million new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are estimated to occur worldwide.[109] After India, China has the highest rate of multidrug-resistant TB.[110] The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that approximately 50 million people worldwide are infected with MDR TB, with 79 percent of those cases resistant to three or more antibiotics. In 2005, 124 cases of MDR TB were reported in the United States. Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) was identified in Africa in 2006, and subsequently discovered to exist in 49 countries, including the United States. About 40,000 new cases of XDR-TB emerge every year, the WHO estimates.[111]
The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis could develop drug-resistance and become a major health threat.[112] Plague epidemics have occurred throughout human history, causing over 200 million deaths worldwide. The ability to resist many of the antibiotics used against plague has been found so far in only a single case of the disease in Madagascar.[113]
In the past 20 years, common bacteria including Staphylococcus aureus, Serratia marcescens and Enterococcus, have developed resistance to various antibiotics such as vancomycin, as well as whole classes of antibiotics, such as the aminoglycosides and cephalosporins. Antibiotic-resistant organisms have become an important cause of healthcare-associated (nosocomial) infections (HAI). In addition, infections caused by community-acquired strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in otherwise healthy individuals have become more frequent in recent years.
Inappropriate antibiotic treatment and overuse of antibiotics have been a contributing factor to the emergence of resistant bacteria. The problem is further exacerbated by self-prescribing of antibiotics by individuals without the guidelines of a qualified clinician and the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics as growth promoters in agriculture.[114]
In 2003, there were concerns that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a new and highly contagious form of atypical pneumonia, might become pandemic. It is caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS-CoV. Rapid action by national and international health authorities such as the World Health Organization helped to slow transmission and eventually broke the chain of transmission. That ended the localized epidemics before they could become a pandemic. However, the disease has not been eradicated. It could re-emerge. This warrants monitoring and reporting of suspicious cases of atypical pneumonia.
Wild aquatic birds are the natural hosts for a range of influenza A viruses. Occasionally, viruses are transmitted from these species to other species, and may then cause outbreaks in domestic poultry or (rarely) give rise to a human pandemic.[115][116]
In February 2004, avian influenza virus was detected in birds in Vietnam, increasing fears of the emergence of new variant strains. It is feared that if the avian influenza virus combines with a human influenza virus (in a bird or a human), the new subtype created could be both highly contagious and highly lethal in humans. Such a subtype could cause a global influenza pandemic, similar to the Spanish Flu, or the lower mortality pandemics such as the Asian Flu and the Hong Kong Flu.
From October 2004 to February 2005, some 3,700 test kits of the 1957 Asian Flu virus were accidentally spread around the world from a lab in the US.[117]
In May 2005, scientists urgently call nations to prepare for a global influenza pandemic that could strike as much as 20% of the world's population.[118]
In October 2005, cases of the avian flu (the deadly strain H5N1) were identified in Turkey. EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said: "We have received now confirmation that the virus found in Turkey is an avian flu H5N1 virus. There is a direct relationship with viruses found in Russia, Mongolia and China." Cases of bird flu were also identified shortly thereafter in Romania, and then Greece. Possible cases of the virus have also been found in Croatia, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom.[119]
By November 2007, numerous confirmed cases of the H5N1 strain had been identified across Europe [120]. However, by the end of October only 59 people had died as a result of H5N1 which was atypical of previous influenza pandemics.
Avian flu cannot yet be categorized as a "pandemic", because the virus cannot yet cause sustained and efficient human-to-human transmission. Cases so far are recognized to have been transmitted from bird to human, but as of December 2006 there have been very few (if any) cases of proven human-to-human transmission. Regular influenza viruses establish infection by attaching to receptors in the throat and lungs, but the avian influenza virus can only attach to receptors located deep in the lungs of humans, requiring close, prolonged contact with infected patients, and thus limiting person-to-person transmission.
In 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa (now Theodosia). After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Jani Beg was suffering the disease, they catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls to infect the inhabitants. It has been speculated that this operation may have been responsible for the advent of the Black Death in Europe.[121]
The Native American population was decimated after contact with the Old World due to the introduction of many different fatal diseases. There is, however, only one documented case of germ warfare, involving British commander Jeffrey Amherst and Swiss-British officer Colonel Henry Bouquet, whose correspondence included a reference to the idea of giving smallpox-infected blankets to Indians as part of an incident known as Pontiac's Rebellion which occurred during the Siege of Fort Pitt (1763) late in the French and Indian War.[122] It is uncertain whether this documented British attempt successfully infected the Indians.[123]
During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army conducted human experimentation on thousands, mostly Chinese. In military campaigns, the Japanese army used biological weapons on Chinese soldiers and civilians. Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians.[124]
Diseases considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized include anthrax, ebola, Marburg virus, plague, cholera, typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, brucellosis, Q fever, machupo, Coccidioides mycosis, Glanders, Melioidosis, Shigella, Psittacosis, Japanese B encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, and smallpox.[125]
Spores of weaponized anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility near the Soviet closed city of Sverdlovsk in 1979. The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak is sometimes called "biological Chernobyl".[125] China possibly suffered a serious accident at one of its biological weapons plants in the late 1980s. The Soviets suspected that two separate epidemics of hemorrhagic fever that swept the region in the late 1980s were caused by an accident in a lab where Chinese scientists were weaponizing viral diseases.[126] In January 2009, an Al-Qaeda training camp in Algeria had been wiped out by the plague, killing approximately 40 Islamic extremists. Experts said that the group was developing biological weapons.[127]
"Leprosy". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Leprosy.This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Translations: Pandemic |
Dansk (Danish)
adj. - pandemisk
n. - pandemi
Nederlands (Dutch)
pandemie, pandemisch, over de hele wereld verspreid
Français (French)
adj. - pandémique
n. - (Méd) pandémie
Deutsch (German)
adj. - pandemisch
n. - Pandemie
Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - πανδημικός
n. - πανδημία
Italiano (Italian)
pandemia, pandemico
Português (Portuguese)
adj. - pandêmico
n. - pandemia (f) (Med.)
Русский (Russian)
пандемическое заболевание, всеобщий
Español (Spanish)
adj. - pandémico
n. - pandemia
Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - allmänt förekommande (sjukdom)
n. - pandemi (med.)
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
全国流行的, 大流行病
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 全國流行的
n. - 大流行病
한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 전국적으로 유행하는, 육욕의
n. - 전국적으로 유행하는 병
日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 全国的流行の, 肉欲の
n. - 汎流行病
العربيه (Arabic)
(صفه) وبائي, فاشي (الاسم) وباء
עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - תוקפת רבים (מחלה), נפוצה באיזור מסוים או בכל העולם (מחלה)
n. - התפרצות של מגיפה
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