sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
By Brian Alexander
msnbc.com contributor
updated 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
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</td></tr><tr valign="top"><td class="boxBI_3027626"><hr align="center" color="#cccccc" size="1" width="85%">? <script language="javascript">document.write('<a href="mailto:'+'sexploration'+'@'+'feedback.msnbc.com?Subject=Sex</script><a href="mailto:sexploration@feedback.msnbc.com?Subject=Sexploration"><script language="javascript">document.write('');</script>
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</td></tr></tbody></table>To most Americans, diseases with names like dengue fever, chikungunya, malaria, Chagas and leishmaniasis might sound like something out of a Victorian explorer?s tales of hacking through African jungles. Yet ongoing epidemics of these diseases are killing millions of people around the world. Now, disease experts are increasingly concerned these and other infections may become as familiar in the United States as West Nile or Lyme disease.
Few believe Americans face a killer epidemic from tropical diseases. But scientists who specialize in emerging infectious diseases say such illnesses may become more common here as the economic downturn batters <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29013047/">an already weakened public health system, creating environmental conditions conducive to infectious diseases spread by insects or other animals. At the same time, such vector-borne diseases are capable of spreading around the world much more rapidly due to massive south-to-north immigration, rapid transportation, and global trade.
?We truly did become a global village,? said Duane Gubler, Director of the Duke/NUS Graduate School of Medicine Emerging Infectious Disease Program in Singapore. ?It has been a sequence of events over a period of 30 years and has come to a head in the last ten years. So we have sounded the alarm.?
Budget cuts over a period of years have left public health at all levels of government underfunded by $20 billion, according to a report published in the U.S. in October by the non-partisan Trust for America?s Health.
The recession has only piled on the pain, with states and counties being especially hard hit. For example, Washington's King County was forced to cut roughly $19 million out of public health in its 2009 budget. Funding was surprisingly tiny even before the recession. ?When I started at the CDC in the summer of 2001, I was told my branch budget was zero,? said Dr. James Maguire, former chief of the CDC?s parasitic diseases branch and now a Harvard professor. ?It was always pretty sparse.? Currently, the budget for the branch is thought to be less than $75,000, not including staff salaries. (The agency was unable to provide a definite amount.)
The total for all emerging diseases was $130.3 million for fiscal 2008. By comparison the CDC expects to spend about $103.7 million on anti-tobacco promotions.
more........
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29599786/
msnbc.com contributor
updated 1 hour, 11 minutes ago
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</td></tr><tr valign="top"><td class="boxBI_3027626"><hr align="center" color="#cccccc" size="1" width="85%">? <script language="javascript">document.write('<a href="mailto:'+'sexploration'+'@'+'feedback.msnbc.com?Subject=Sex</script><a href="mailto:sexploration@feedback.msnbc.com?Subject=Sexploration"><script language="javascript">document.write('');</script>
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</td></tr></tbody></table>
</td></tr></tbody></table>To most Americans, diseases with names like dengue fever, chikungunya, malaria, Chagas and leishmaniasis might sound like something out of a Victorian explorer?s tales of hacking through African jungles. Yet ongoing epidemics of these diseases are killing millions of people around the world. Now, disease experts are increasingly concerned these and other infections may become as familiar in the United States as West Nile or Lyme disease.
Few believe Americans face a killer epidemic from tropical diseases. But scientists who specialize in emerging infectious diseases say such illnesses may become more common here as the economic downturn batters <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29013047/">an already weakened public health system, creating environmental conditions conducive to infectious diseases spread by insects or other animals. At the same time, such vector-borne diseases are capable of spreading around the world much more rapidly due to massive south-to-north immigration, rapid transportation, and global trade.
?We truly did become a global village,? said Duane Gubler, Director of the Duke/NUS Graduate School of Medicine Emerging Infectious Disease Program in Singapore. ?It has been a sequence of events over a period of 30 years and has come to a head in the last ten years. So we have sounded the alarm.?
Budget cuts over a period of years have left public health at all levels of government underfunded by $20 billion, according to a report published in the U.S. in October by the non-partisan Trust for America?s Health.
The recession has only piled on the pain, with states and counties being especially hard hit. For example, Washington's King County was forced to cut roughly $19 million out of public health in its 2009 budget. Funding was surprisingly tiny even before the recession. ?When I started at the CDC in the summer of 2001, I was told my branch budget was zero,? said Dr. James Maguire, former chief of the CDC?s parasitic diseases branch and now a Harvard professor. ?It was always pretty sparse.? Currently, the budget for the branch is thought to be less than $75,000, not including staff salaries. (The agency was unable to provide a definite amount.)
The total for all emerging diseases was $130.3 million for fiscal 2008. By comparison the CDC expects to spend about $103.7 million on anti-tobacco promotions.
more........
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29599786/