As per the WHO statement on Thursday Infectious diseases are emerging more quickly and spreading faster around the globe than ever and becoming increasingly difficult to treat.

With billions of people moving around the planet every year, the U.N. agency said in its annual World Health Report: “An outbreak or epidemic in one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else.”

WHO director-general Margaret Chan said mass travel could facilitate the rapid spread of infectious diseases.

“No country can shield itself from invasion by a pathogen incubating in an airline passenger or an insect hiding in a cargo hold,” Chan told reporters.

The U.N. agency warned that there was a good possibility of another major scourge like AIDS, SARS or Ebola fever with the potential of killing millions appearing in the coming years.

“Infectious diseases are now spreading geographically much faster than at any time in history,” the WHO said.

It said it was vital to keep watch for new threats like the emergence in 2003 of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which spread from China to 30 countries and killed 800 people.

“It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like AIDS, another Ebola, or another SARS, sooner or later,” the report warned.

Since the 1970s, the WHO said, new threats have been identified at an “unprecedented rate” of one or more every year, meaning that nearly 40 diseases exist today which were unknown just over a generation ago.

Over the last five years alone, WHO experts had verified more than 1,100 epidemics of different diseases.

It was therefore vital for countries to share information on outbreaks so risks can be assessed and mitigated, Chan said.

Monitoring vital

The report called for renewed efforts to monitor, prevent and control epidemic-prone illnesses such as cholera, yellow fever and meningococcal diseases.

International assistance may be required to help health workers in poorer countries identify and contain outbreaks of emerging viral diseases such as Ebola and Marburg haemorrhagic fever, the WHO said.

It warned global efforts to control infectious diseases had been “seriously jeopardised” by widespread drug resistance, a consequence of poor medical treatment and misuse of antibiotics.

This is a particular problem with tuberculosis. Extensively drug-resistant (XDR-TB) strains of the contagious respiratory ailment have emerged worldwide.

Although the H5N1 bird flu virus has not mutated into a form that passes easily between humans, as many scientists had feared, the next influenza pandemic was “likely to be of an avian variety” and could affect some 1.5 billion people.

Chan noted that the last influenza pandemic was in 1968 and had killed about 1 million people. “We have learned from previous pandemics that even the mildest pandemic causes too many premature deaths. We don’t want to see that,” she said.

She urged countries affected by human cases of bird flu, including Indonesia, to continue sharing virus samples, deemed crucial to tracking the virus and to developing a pandemic vaccine.

Missing the point

What WHO failed to point out at this time is actually how much research work is being done in the area of common infectious diseases widely prevalent in developing nations across Asia and Africa and other poor European nations.

The drug companies still dictate the prices of the life saving drugs treating common infectious diseases like Tuberculosis, Malaria, HIV and Dengue.

The WHO should make more efforts in persuading these multinational drug companies in conducting more vigorous research on these conditions widely prevalent all over the world.

The drug companies should also come together and make these common treatment medications more easily available at much more cheaper prices.

The amount of research and funding poured upon in the area of vaccine preparations and diagnostic tools to treat and diagnose the rare conditions mostly prevalent in the developed nations is proportionately getting bigger everyday.

Even if a small proportion of this research and funding is diversified in improving the treatment methods and diagnostic facilities for common infectious conditions like Tuberculosis, Malaria, Dengue and HIV then many more lives can be saved and these infections can be prevented from spreading rampantly.