Pestilences in the 20th Century - Old Diseases Become More Deadly

One reason for concern is that well-known diseases, once thought conquered are making a comeback in forms more lethal and more difficult to cure. An example  is tuberculosis, a disease one regarded as virtually under control in the developed world. But  tuberculosis did not disappear; It now kills about three million people a year. If control measures  are not improved, about 90 million people are expected to develop the disease during the 1 990's.  Drug resistant tuberculosis is spreading in many countries. 

Another example of a reemerging disease is malaria. Forty years ago doctors had hopes of quickly eradicating malaria. Today the disease kills about two million people every year.  Malaria is epidemic, or always present, in over 90 countries and threatens 40 percent of the world's population.  Mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasites  have come resistant to pesticides, and the parasites themselves have become so resistant to drugs that doctors fear that some strains of malaria may soon be incurable.  There is another disease that has never left.  Cancer,  it may be relaxed and dormant for years after a person has thought they were clean, but I have talked to people who had it and it came back in a vengeance and killed the people or relatives  supposedly clean. 

Next time: Pestilences in the 20th century - Disease and Poverty

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