Why are infectious diseases increasing in number around the world?

Answer 1

The simple answer is that the number of people in the world are increasing, hence the number of infections are increasing. However, I suspect you're wondering why the rates of infection are increasing (i.e., the percentage of people infected is higher than it used to be). If, in fact, the rates of infection are increasing, it could be due to many factors.

First, it may be detection bias. We are better at detecting and finding cases than we used to be so the number of cases goes up. It's like mice in your garage; until you start looking for them you can't be sure they're there.

Second, it seems that HIV and TB have a complimentary effect on one another. This may have something to do with the fact that they both infect, and can survive in, cells of your immune system. As the number of HIV infections increases (which we know it is doing) these people become infected with TB and are more contagious than HIV-negative individuals. So the two epidemics feed off of each other.

Finally, there's the issue of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics were first used to treat TB in the mid-1950's. Since that time, the bacteria have been slowly growing resistant to many different antibiotics. This causes the bacteria to evolve more quickly into more and more virulent strains. These new strains may be increasingly easy to transmit from one individual to another.

How's that for a complicated answer?

Answer 2

Bacteria continuously adapt and grow to the medications that we use to fight off the diseases. For example, staphylococcus aureus, better known as "Staph" was treated with penicillin. Through time, it adapted and evolved to become immune to it. Then Penicillin Resistant S. aureus (PRSA) was created. MRSA evolved the same way.

This is why medications and antibiotics should be used particularly and religiously.

Answer 3

Because far more people are travelling and such travel is made much simpler due to better transportation systems. This is correct but further to this, compulsory inocculations have ceased to exist. In my lifetime (55 years) a traveller could not enter certain countries without having had the required 'shots'. Australia insisted upon quite a few shots up until the late 1960's. Today, none are required. Similarly, a citizen leaving his/her country to certain destinations had to have shots to minimize bringing diseases back into their own contry. When travellers arrived without passports or other papers, they were kept in quarantine to ensure thay weren't carrying certain diseases. This practise appears also to have stopped almost universally. All this leads to the increased chances of pandemics etc.

Answer 4

It is the season (flu season) that influenza viruses are typically more active now in the Northern Hemisphere (October to May). In the flu season the absolute humidity levels are drier. Recent studies suggest that flu viruses like it dry: they spread more easily when it is drier and also survive longer outside a host in those conditions.

Flu outbreaks also tend to move in waves. For example, during the 2009 H1N1/09 Swine Flu pandemic, a secondary increase of cases was expected by epidemiologists to come in a second wave like in the 1918 Spanish flu. It was noticed to have moved in similar waves, which may happen with seasonal flu, too, but it could be that it is just less noticed when the case numbers are not at pandemic proportions (as in 1918 and 2009).

Answer 5

Infectious Diseases are increasing around the world due to lack of information and resources. Many are not vaccinating, are traveling, and spreading diseases easier.

Answer 6

infection diseases spread by the sexual activity with women that have HIV/AIDS.