The Return of Infectious Disease

Abstract

Since World War II, public health strategy has focused on the eradication of microbes. Using powerful medical weaponry developed during the postwar period — antibiotics, antimalarials and vaccines — political and scientific leaders in the United States and around the world pursued a military-style campaign to obliterate viral, bacterial and parasitic enemies. The goal was nothing less than pushing humanity through what was termed the ‘health transition’, leaving the age of infectious disease permanently behind. By the turn of the century, it was thought, most of the world’s population would live long lives ended only by the ‘chronics’ — cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.