OTHER DISEASE THREATS WORLDWIDE:
AIDS/HIV:
– 33 million people Are estimated worldwide who are living with HIV, an immunity-destroying disease which spreads through sexual contact, also blood transfusions, needle-sharing. Mostl live in developing countries.
– Each year approx 2.5 million individuals are newly-infected and 2 million casualties from AIDS related causes. Drugs, taken on a continual basis, have extended the lifespan of people with this awful disease.
– AIDS/ HIV has killed more than 25,000,000 people worldwide so far, and is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa and the 4th leading cause of deaths globally.
TUBERCULOSIS:
– 1/3rd of the world’s population – approx two billion individuals — are infected with the bacterium causing tuberculosis, a disease affecting the lungs.
– approx Nine Million people get the disease each year when their immune system weakens, normally from illness or pregnancy. In 2007 there were 1,300,000 tuberculosis deaths among people without AIDS, and 456,000 deaths among people infected with both tuberculosis and AIDS.
– Tuberculosis can be treated with antibiotics, but drug-resistant forms of the disease have made it increasingly hard, and costly, to treat.
* MALARIA
– Almost 50 percent of the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, are at risk from malaria, a tropical disease that is transmitted from human to human by mosquitoes.
– Each year nearly 1,000,000 people die from malaria, mostly children under the age of 5, and 189,000,000 to 327,000,000 are diagnosed with the disease that can be prevented with drugs.
– The highest at risk include children, pregnant women, travelers, refugees, and migrant workers in endemic areas.
* INFLUENZA:
– Between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 people experience severe illness due to regular, seasonal flu around the world each year, and between 250,000 and 500,000 die as a result
