Assessment of the Threat

Abstract

In terms of threat to Western communities, the events of the past few years have focused attention on Marburg, Lassa and Ebola fevers in their capacity as new, lethal and highly communicable diseases, but they are not the only diseases which merit consideration. Other diseases such as Legionnaires’ disease and Rift Valley fever are both newly emergent and dangerous while some of the older diseases such as smallpox and plague cannot be ignored. Preliminary scrutiny suggests that the diseases listed in Table I should be examined in terms both of their epidemic threat to human communities and their ecological threat. The ecological threat is posed by the possibility of establishing the diseases in previously uninfected potential reservoirs in regional fauna outside their present geographical limits.