Scientific advances have helped us understand and limit the impact of pandemics but we still cannot deliver the simple measures needed to control them for the benefit of all
The biggest surprise about pandemics is that we are still surprised they happen. There are more than 1,400 known human pathogens and almost all of them are capable of causing epidemic increases. Starting as localised outbreaks, they could develop into pandemics that, left unchecked, may infect millions of people. There are also hundreds of animal diseases that have the capacity to cross the species barrier, causing new pandemic diseases, as Sars did in 2002-03.
The feature of infectious diseases that distinguishes them from other illnesses is that they change markedly over time, giving rise to new human diseases. This is because the microbes that cause them are constantly evolving. A case in point is antimicrobial resistance. As soon as we treat infectious diseases we are creating evolutional pressure to select for resistance strains, hence new disease problems.
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