It’s easy to feel negative about the health of the world’s population. Growing antibiotic resistance, the phenomenal upsurge in obesity-related ailments and glitches related to an ageing population are all cause for concern.
But how about the ailments that mankind is winning the battle against? The fact is, we are on the verge of eliminating a slew of lethal illnesses that were, until lately, impacting millions of people.
Thirty-five years ago, the World Health Organization announced that smallpox had been eliminated. Now it’s hoped that similar announcements will be made about several other killer illnesses in the future.
Measles
Measles is highly infectious. Its gravest complications include impaired vision, severe diarrhea, serious breathing infections. The disease can also have a debilitating lasting impact on children’s immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to other communicable diseases. This makes the measles vaccine even more significant.
In addition to contained epidemics linked with parents declining vaccinations for their children, measles has been mostly eradicated in most rich countries, and deaths from measles worldwide have fallen by 75% since 2000.
Although the virus is still prevalent in many underdeveloped countries, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia, the World Health Organization expects the disease will be completely eradicated from the world by 2020.
Guinea worm
Triggered by a bug caused dracunculiasis, Guinea worm is exceptionally painful and can be enduringly incapacitating, particularly in children.
The worm spreads through dirty drinking water and can ruin the muscles and tissue nearby a knee or inside a foot, which makes it impossible for young children to walk for the rest of their lives. A whopping 3.5 million cases of the disease were reported in 1986 globally. However, the number came down to a mere 22 by 2015, and no cases of Guinea worm were reported in 2019.
Rubella
Rubella is a highly transmittable illness which in young people and adults typically only triggers a rash and cold-like symptoms. But it is very dangerous for unborn children in their first trimester and can create deafness, impaired vision and brain damage.
Rubella has been publicly declared eradicated from the Americas but with about 120,000 children a year born worldwide with severe rubella-related birth flaws, a great deal of work still needs to be done.
Mumps
Mumps is an infectious disease that usually triggers the salivary glands in the cheeks and jaw to swell. While a majority of cases cause no permanent damage, it can lead to severe hitches that include encephalitis or meningitis, inflammation of the ovaries or breasts and deafness.
Before children in the US began receiving routine vaccination against mumps, it was a common illness in children and young adults. In 1964, there were almost 212,000 cases in the US. Today, mumps epidemics are occasional, though they do occur sporadically, such as the 2009 epidemic that involved about 3,500 cases, mainly in New York.
Polio
Polio is a crippling and occasionally lethal communicable disease for which there is no treatment. While most people who get the disease recuperate completely, in around 1% of cases polio can leave its victims with permanent physical incapacities. Among people with the disease who become paralyzed, about 5% to 10% perish when the muscles that control their breathing are rendered immovable by the virus.