Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development
predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is
postulated to arise from advances in production technology and
corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on needs and social relations based on freely-associated individuals. The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.
Xue Muqiao wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases.
Su Shaozhi and Feng Langrui article created two subdivisions within the
socialist mode of production; the first phase was the transition from
the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of
production—the phase in which the proletariat seized power and set-up
the dictatorship of the proletariat and in which undeveloped socialism
was created. The second phase was advanced socialism; the socialism that
Marx wrote about.
The notion that socialism and Communism are distinct historical stages is alien to Karl Marx's work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death.
It is said that Karl Marx distinguishes between two phases of marketless
communism: an initial phase, with labor vouchers, and a higher phase,
with free access.
Economic aspects
A communist economic system would be characterized by advanced
productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn
would enable the free distribution of most or all economic output and
the holding of the means of producing this output in common. In this
respect communism is differentiated from socialism, which, out of economic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumption and services based on one's contribution.
In further contrast to previous economic systems, communism would
be characterized by the holding of natural resources and the means of
production in common as opposed to them being privately owned (as in the
case of capitalism)
or owned by public or cooperative organizations that similarly restrict
their access (as in the case of socialism). In this sense, communism
involves the "negation of property" insofar as there would be little
economic rationale for exclusive control over production assets in an
environment of material abundance.
The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to
develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that
socialism—a system based on social ownership
of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development
of fully developed communism by further advancing productive
technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation,
an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.
Social aspects
Individuality, freedom and creativity
A communist society would free individuals from long working hours by
first automating production to an extent that the average length of the
working day is reduced
and second by eliminating the exploitation inherent in the division
between workers and owners. A communist system would thus free
individuals from alienation in the sense of having one's life structured
around survival (making a wage or salary in a capitalist system), which
Karl Marx
referred to as a transition from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm
of freedom". As a result, a communist society is envisioned as being
composed of an intellectually-inclined population with both the time and
resources to pursue its creative
hobbies and genuine interests, and to contribute to creative social
wealth in this manner. Marx considered "true richness" to be the amount
of time one has at his disposal to pursue one's creative passions.Marx's notion of communism is in this way radically individualistic.
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which
is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in
the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material
production.
Marx's concept of the "realm of freedom" goes hand-in-hand with his idea of the ending of the division of labor,
which would not be required in a society with highly automated
production and limited work roles. In a communist society, economic
necessity and relations would cease to determine cultural and social
relations. As scarcity is eliminated, alienated labor would cease and people would be free to pursue their individual goals.
Additionally, it is believed that the principle of "from each according
to his ability, to each according to his needs" could be fulfilled due
to scarcity being non-existent.
Politics, law and governance
Marx
and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for
the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The
capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic
relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate
capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable
to a communist system.
Engels noted that in a socialist system the primary function of
public institutions will shift from being about the creation of laws and
the control of people into a technical role as an administrator of
technical production processes, with a decrease in the scope of
traditional politics as scientific administration overtakes the role of
political decision-making.
Communist society is characterized by democratic processes, not merely
in the sense of electoral democracy, but in the broader sense of open
and collaborative social and workplace environments.
Marx never clearly specified whether or not he thought a communist society would be just;
other thinkers have speculated that he thought communism would
transcend justice and create society without conflicts, thus, without
the needs for rules of justice.
Transitional stages
Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist society, there would be a transitory period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist
economic relationships would gradually be abolished and replaced with
socialism. Natural resources would become public property, while all manufacturing centers and workplaces would become socially owned and democraticallymanaged. Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning,
thus eliminating what Marx called the "anarchy in production". The
development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalization
of human labor to the highest possible extent, to be gradually replaced
by automated labor.
Open-source and peer production
Many aspects of a communist economy have emerged in recent decades in the form of open-source software and hardware,
where source code and thus the means of producing software is held in
common and freely accessible to everyone; and to the processes of peer production where collaborative work processes produce freely available software that does not rely on monetary valuation.
Ray Kurzweil
posits that the goals of communism will be realized by advanced
technological developments in the 21st century, where the intersection
of low manufacturing costs, material abundance and open-source design
philosophies will enable the realization of the maxim "from each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
In Soviet ideology
The communist economic system was officially enumerated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its party platform. According to the 1986 Programme of the CPSU:
Communism is a classless social
system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and
with full social equality of all members of society. Under communism,
the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of
the productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science
and technology, all the springs of social wealth will flow abundantly,
and the great principle "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs" will be implemented. Communism is a highly
organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society
in which public self-government will be established, a society in which
labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement
of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity, and the ability of each
person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people.
The material and technical foundation of communism presupposes
the creation of those productive forces that open up opportunities for
the full satisfaction of the reasonable requirements of society and the
individual. All productive activities under communism will be based on
the use of highly efficient technical facilities and technologies, and
the harmonious interaction of man and nature will be ensured.
In the highest phase of communism the directly social character
of labor and production will become firmly established. Through the
complete elimination of the remnants of the old division of labor and
the essential social differences associated with it, the process of
forming a socially homogeneous society will be completed.
Communism signifies the transformation of the system of socialist
self-government by the people, of socialist democracy into the highest
form of organization of society: communist public self-government. With
the maturation of the necessary socioeconomic and ideological
preconditions and the involvement of all citizens in administration, the
socialist state—given appropriate international conditions—will, as
Lenin noted, increasingly become a transitional form "from a state to a
non-state". The activities of state bodies will become non-political in
nature, and the need for the state as a special political institution
will gradually disappear.
The inalienable feature of the communist mode of life is a high
level of consciousness, social activity, discipline, and self-discipline
of members of society, in which observance of the uniform, generally
accepted rules of communist conduct will become an inner need and habit
of every person.
Communism is a social system under which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.
In Vladimir Lenin's
political theory, a classless society would be a society controlled by
the direct producers, organized to produce according to socially managed
goals. Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits that would
gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically
democratic nature of the Soviets would lead citizens to come to agree
with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment,
Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in a period of stateless communism.
In Soviet ideology, Marx's concepts of the "lower and higher phases of communism" articulated in the Critique of the Gotha Program were reformulated as the stages of "socialism" and "communism". The Soviet state claimed to have begun the phase of "socialist construction" during the implementation of the first Five-Year Plans
during the 1930s, which introduced a centrally planned,
nationalized/collectivized economy. The 1962 Program of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, published under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, claimed that socialism had been firmly established in the USSR, and that the state would now progress to the "full-scale construction of communism",
although this may be understood to refer to the "technical foundations"
of communism more so than the withering away of the state and the
division of labor per se. However, even in the final edition of its
program before the party's dissolution, the CPSU did not claim to have
fully established communism, instead claiming that the society was undergoing a very slow and gradual process of transition.
Several works of utopian fiction have portrayed versions of a communist society. Some examples include: Assemblywomen (391 BC) by Aristophanes,
an early piece of utopian satire which mocks Athenian democracy's
excesses through the story of the Athenian women taking control of the
government and instituting a proto-communistutopia;
The economy and society of the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek
franchise has been described as a communist society where material
scarcity has been eliminated due to the wide availability of replicator
technology that enables free distribution of output, where there is no
need for money.
The Culture novels by Iain M Banks are centered on a communist post-scarcity economywhere technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated, and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value).
Humans in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open
and socially-permissive society. The society has been described by some
commentators as "communist-bloc" or "anarcho-communist". Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod
has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's
communism, but adds that "however friendly he was to the radical left,
Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of
utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what
mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing
technological progress, especially space development, and in the
meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world
were rational and humane."
Globalization,
the flow of information, goods, capital, and people across political
and geographic boundaries, allows infectious diseases to rapidly spread
around the world, while also allowing the alleviation of factors such as
hunger and poverty, which are key determinants of global health. The spread of diseases across wide geographic scales has increased through history. Early diseases that spread from Asia to Europe were bubonic plague, influenza of various types, and similar infectious diseases.
In the current era of globalization, the world is more
interdependent than at any other time. Efficient and inexpensive
transportation has left few places inaccessible, and increased global
trade in agricultural products has brought more and more people into
contact with animal diseases that have subsequently jumped species barriers (see zoonosis).
Globalization intensified during the Age of Exploration,
but trading routes had long been established between Asia and Europe,
along which diseases were also transmitted. An increase in travel has
helped spread diseases to natives of lands who had not previously been
exposed. When a native population is infected with a new disease, where they have not developed antibodies through generations of previous exposure, the new disease tends to run rampant within the population.
Etiology, the modern branch of science that deals with the causes of infectious disease, recognizes five major modes of disease transmission: airborne, waterborne, bloodborne, by direct contact, and through vector (insects or other creatures that carry germs from one species to another).
As humans began traveling overseas and across lands which were
previously isolated, research suggests that diseases have been spread by
all five transmission modes.
Travel patterns and globalization
The Age of Exploration generally refers to the period between the 15th and 17th centuries. During this time, technological advances in shipbuilding
and navigation made it easier for nations to explore outside previous
boundaries. Globalization has had many benefits, for example, new
products to Europeans were discovered, such as tea, silk and sugar when Europeans developed new trade routes around Africa to India and the Spice Islands, Asia, and eventually running to the Americas.
In addition to trading in goods, many nations began to trade in slavery.
Trading in slaves was another way by which diseases were carried to new
locations and peoples, for instance, from sub-Saharan Africa to the
Caribbean and the Americas. During this time, different societies began to integrate, increasing the concentration of humans and animals in certain places, which led to the emergence of new diseases as some jumped in mutation from animals to humans.
During this time sorcerers' and witch doctors' treatment of disease was often focused on magic and religion, and healing the entire body and soul, rather than focusing on a few symptoms like modern medicine. Early medicine often included the use of herbs and meditation. Based on archaeological evidence, some prehistoric practitioners in both Europe and South America used trephining, making a hole in the skull to release illness. Severe diseases were often thought of as supernatural
or magical. The result of the introduction of Eurasian diseases to the
Americas was that many more native peoples were killed by disease and germs
than by the colonists' use of guns or other weapons. Scholars estimate
that over a period of four centuries, epidemic diseases wiped out as
much as 90 percent of the American indigenous populations.
Map with the main travels of the Age of Discovery (began in 15th century).
In Europe during the age of exploration, diseases such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis
(TB) had already been introduced centuries before through trade with
Asia and Africa. People had developed some antibodies to these and other
diseases from the Eurasian continent. When the Europeans traveled to
new lands, they carried these diseases with them. (Note: Scholars
believe TB was already endemic in the Americas.) When such diseases were
introduced for the first time to new populations of humans, the effects
on the native populations were widespread and deadly. The Columbian Exchange, referring to Christopher Columbus's first contact with the native peoples of the Caribbean, began the trade of animals, and plants, and unwittingly began an exchange of diseases.
It was not until the 1800s that humans began to recognize the existence and role of germs and microbes in relation to disease. Although many thinkers had ideas about germs, it was not until French doctor Louis Pasteur spread his theory about germs, and the need for washing hands and maintaining sanitation
(particularly in medical practice), that anyone listened. Many people
were quite skeptical, but on May 22, 1881, Pasteur persuasively
demonstrated the validity of his germ theory of disease with an early
example of vaccination. The anthrax vaccine was administered to 25 sheep while another 25 were used as a control. On May 31, 1881, all of the sheep were exposed to anthrax. While every sheep in the control group died, each of the vaccinated sheep survived.
Pasteur's experiment would become a milestone in disease prevention.
His findings, in conjunction with other vaccines that followed, changed
the way globalization affected the world.
Effects of globalization on disease in the modern world
Modern modes of transportation allow more people and products to travel around the world at a faster pace; they also open the airways to the transcontinental movement of infectious disease vectors. One example is the West Nile virus. It is believed that this disease reached the United States via "mosquitoes that crossed the ocean by riding in airplane wheel wells and arrived in New York City in 1999."
With the use of air travel, people are able to go to foreign lands,
contract a disease and not have any symptoms of illness until after they
get home, and having exposed others to the disease along the way.
Another example of the potency of modern modes of transportation in
increasing the spread of disease is the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Global transportation, back in the early 20th century, was able to
spread a virus because the network of transmittance and trade was
already global. The virus was found on crew members of ships and trains,
and all the infected employees spread the virus everywhere they
traveled. As a result, almost 50-100 million people died of this global transmission.
As medicine has progressed, many vaccines and cures have been
developed for some of the worst diseases (plague, syphilis, typhus,
cholera, malaria) that people develop. But, because the evolution of disease organisms is very rapid, even with vaccines, there is difficulty providing full immunity
to many diseases. Since vaccines are made partly from the virus itself,
when an unknown virus is introduced into the environment, it takes time
for the medical community to formulate a curable vaccine.
The lack of operational and functional research and data, which provide
a quicker and more strategized pathway to a reliable vaccine, makes for
a lengthy vaccine development timeline. Even though frameworks are set
up and preparations plans are utilized to decrease the COVID-19 cases, a
vaccine is the only way to ensure complete immunization. Some systems
like the IIS, Immunization Information System, help give preliminary
structure for quick responses to outbreaks and unknown viruses. These systems employ past data and research-based on modern world vaccine development successes.
Finding vaccines at all for some diseases remains extremely difficult.
Without vaccines, the global world remains vulnerable to infectious
diseases.
Evolution of disease presents a major threat in modern times. For example, the current "swine flu" or H1N1 virus
is a new strain of an old form of flu, known for centuries as Asian flu
based on its origin on that continent. From 1918 to 1920, a post-World War Iglobal influenza epidemic killed an estimated 50–100 million peens, including half a million in the United States alone. H1N1 is a virus that has evolved from and partially combined with portions of avian, swine, and human flu.
Globalization has increased the spread of infectious diseases
from South to North, but also the risk of non-communicable diseases by
transmission of culture and behavior from North to South. It is
important to target and reduce the spread of infectious diseases in
developing countries. However, addressing the risk factors of
non-communicable diseases and lifestyle risks in the South that cause
disease, such as use or consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy
foods, is important as well.
Even during pandemics, it is vital to recognize economic globalization in being a catalyst in the spread of the coronavirus.
Economic factors are especially damaged by increased global lockdown
regulations and trade blockades. As transportation globalized, economies
expanded. Internalized economies saw great financial opportunities in
global trade.
With increased interconnectivity among economies and the globalization
of the world economy, the spread of the coronavirus maximized the
potentiality of global recessions. The coronavirus pandemic caused many
economic disruptions, which caused a functional disconnect in the supply
chain and the flow of goods. As transportation modes are relevant to
the spread of infectious diseases, it is important to also recognize the
economy being the motor of this globalized transmission system.
Bubonic plague is a variant of the deadly flea-borne disease plague, which is caused by the enterobacteriaYersinia pestis,
that devastated human populations beginning in the 14th century.
Bubonic plague is primarily spread by fleas that lived on the black rat,
an animal that originated in South Asia and spread to Europe by the 6th
century. It became common to cities and villages, traveling by ship
with explorers. A human would become infected after being bitten by an
infected flea. The first sign of an infection of bubonic plague is
swelling of the lymph nodes, and the formation of buboes. These buboes would first appear in the groin or armpit area, and would often ooze pus or blood.
Eventually infected individuals would become covered with dark
splotches caused by bleeding under the skin. The symptoms would be
accompanied by a high fever, and within four to seven days of infection, more than half of the affected would die.
The first recorded outbreak of plague occurred in China
in the 1330s, a time when China was engaged in substantial trade with
western Asia and Europe. The plague reached Europe in October 1347. It
was thought to have been brought into Europe through the port of Messina, Sicily, by a fleet of Genoese trading ships from Kaffa, a seaport on the Crimean peninsula.
When the ship left port in Kaffa, many of the inhabitants of the town
were dying, and the crew was in a hurry to leave. By the time the fleet
reached Messina, all the crew were either dead or dying; the rats that
took passage with the ship slipped unnoticed to shore and carried the
disease with them and their fleas.
Within Europe, the plague struck port cities first, then followed people along both sea and land trade routes. It raged through Italy into France and the British Isles. It was carried over the Alps into Switzerland, and eastward into Hungary and Russia. For a time during the 14th and 15th centuries, the plague would recede. Every ten to twenty years, it would return. Later epidemics, however, were never as widespread as the earlier outbreaks, when 60% of the population died.
Worldwide distribution of plague-infected animals, 1998
The third plague pandemic emerged in Yunnan province of China in the mid-nineteenth century. It spread east and south through China, reaching Guangzhou (Canton) and Hong Kong
in 1894, where it entered the global maritime trade routes. Plague
reached Singapore and Bombay in 1896. China lost an estimated 2 million
people between plague's reappearance in the mid-nineteenth century and
its retreat in the mid-twentieth. In India,
between 1896 and the 1920s, plague claimed an estimated 12 million
lives, most in the Bombay province. Plague spread into the countries
around the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. From China
it also spread eastward to Japan, the Philippines and Hawaii, and in
Central Asia it spread overland into the Russian territories from
Siberia to Turkistan. By 1901 there had been outbreaks of plague on
every continent, and new plague reservoirs would produce regular
outbreaks over the ensuing decades.
Measles
Measles is a highly contagious airborne virus
spread by contact with infected oral and nasal fluids. When a person
with measles coughs or sneezes, they release microscopic particles into
the air. During the 4- to 12-day incubation period,
an infected individual shows no symptoms, but as the disease
progresses, the following symptoms appear: runny nose, cough, red eyes,
extremely high fever and a rash.
Measles is an endemic disease,
meaning that it has been continually present in a community, and many
people developed resistance. In populations that have not been exposed
to measles, exposure to the new disease can be devastating. In 1529, a
measles outbreak in Cuba
killed two-thirds of the natives who had previously survived smallpox.
Two years later measles was responsible for the deaths of half the
indigenous population of Honduras, and ravaged Mexico, Central America, and the Inca civilization.
Historically, measles was very prevalent throughout the world, as
it is highly contagious. According to the National Immunization
Program, 90% of people were infected with measles by age 15, acquiring
immunity to further outbreaks. Until a vaccine was developed in 1963,
measles was considered to be deadlier than smallpox.
Vaccination reduced the number of reported occurrences by 98%. Major
epidemics have predominantly occurred in unvaccinated populations,
particularly among nonwhite Hispanic and African American children under 5 years old.
In 2000 a group of experts determined that measles was no longer
endemic in the United States. The majority of cases that occur are among
immigrants from other countries.
Typhus
Typhus is caused by rickettsia, which is transmitted to humans through lice. The main vector for typhus is the rat flea.
Flea bites and infected flea feaces in the respiratory tract are the
two most common methods of transmission. In areas where rats are not
common, typhus may also be transmitted through cat and opossum fleas. The incubation period of typhus is 7–14 days. The symptoms start with a fever, then headache, rash, and eventually stupor. Spontaneous recovery occurs in 80–90% of victims.
The first outbreak of typhus was recorded in 1489. Historians believe that troops from the Balkans, hired by the Spanish army, brought it to Spain with them. By 1490 typhus traveled from the eastern Mediterranean into Spain and Italy, and by 1494, it had swept across Europe. From 1500 to 1914, more soldiers were killed by typhus than from all the combined military actions during that time. It was a disease associated with the crowded conditions of urban poverty and refugees as well. Finally, during World War I, governments instituted preventative delousing measures among the armed forces and other groups, and the disease began to decline. The creation of antibiotics has allowed disease to be controlled within two days of taking a 200 mg dose of tetracycline.
Syphilis
An early medical illustration of people with syphilis, Vienna, 1498
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that causes open sores, delirium and rotting skin, and is characterized by genital ulcers. Syphilis can also do damage to the nervous system, brain and heart. The disease can be transmitted from mother to child.
The origins of syphilis are unknown, and some historians argue that it descended from a twenty-thousand-year-old African zoonosis. Other historians place its emergence in the New World, arguing that the crews of Columbus's ships first brought the disease to Europe. The first recorded case of syphilis occurred in Naples in 1495, after King Charles VIII of France besieged the city of Naples, Italy.
The soldiers, and the prostitutes who followed their camps, came from
all corners of Europe. When they went home, they took the disease with
them and spread it across the continent.
Smallpox
Smallpox is a highly contagious disease caused by the Variola virus.
There are four variations of smallpox; variola major, variola minor,
haemorrhagic, and malignant, with the most common being variola major
and variola minor. Symptoms of the disease including hemorrhaging, blindness, back ache, vomiting, which generally occur shortly after the 12- to 17-day incubation period. The virus begins to attack skin cells, and eventually leads to an eruption of pimples that cover the whole body. As the disease progresses, the pimples
fill up with pus or merge. This merging results in a sheet that can
detach the bottom layer from the top layer of skin. The disease is
easily transmitted through airborne pathways (coughing, sneezing, and
breathing), as well as through contaminated bedding, clothing or other
fabrics.
It is believed that smallpox first emerged over 3000 years ago, probably in India or Egypt. There have been numerous recorded devastating epidemics throughout the world, with high losses of life.
Smallpox was a common disease in Eurasia in the 15th century, and was spread by explorers and invaders. After Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola during his second voyage in 1493, local people started to die of a virulentinfection. Before the smallpox epidemic started, more than one million indigenous people had lived on the island; afterward, only ten thousand had survived.
During the 16th century, Spanish soldiers introduced smallpox by contact with natives of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. A devastating epidemic broke out among the indigenous people, killing thousands.
In 1617, smallpox reached Massachusetts, probably brought by earlier explorers to Nova Scotia, Canada." By 1638 the disease had broken out among people in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1721 people fled the city after an outbreak, but the residents spread the disease to others throughout the Thirteen Colonies. Smallpox broke out in six separate epidemics in the United States through 1968.
The smallpox vaccine was developed in 1798 by Edward Jenner. By 1979 the disease had been completely eradicated, with no new outbreaks. The WHO
stopped providing vaccinations and by 1986, vaccination was no longer
necessary to anyone in the world except in the event of future outbreak.
Leprosy
New cases of leprosy in 2016
Leprosy, also known as Hansen's Disease, is caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. It is a chronic disease with an incubation period of up to five years. Symptoms often include irritation or erosion of the skin, and effects on the peripheral nerves, mucosa of the upper respiratory tract and eyes. The most common sign of leprosy are pale reddish spots on the skin that lack sensation.
Leprosy originated in India, more than four thousand years ago. It was prevalent in ancient societies in China, Egypt and India, and was transmitted throughout the world by various traveling groups, including Roman Legionnaires, Crusaders, Spanish conquistadors, Asian seafarers, European colonists, and Arab, African, and American slave traders. Some historians believe that Alexander the Great's troops brought leprosy from India to Europe during the 3rd century BC. With the help of the crusaders and other travelers, leprosy reached epidemic proportions by the 13th century.
Once detected, leprosy can be cured using multi-drug therapy,
composed of two or three antibiotics, depending on the type of leprosy.
In 1991 the World Health Assembly began an attempt to eliminate leprosy.
By 2005 116 of 122 countries were reported to be free of leprosy.
Malaria
Past and current malaria prevalence in 2009
On Nov. 6, 1880 Alphonse Laveran discovered that malaria (then called "Marsh Fever") was a protozoan parasite, and that mosquitoes carry and transmit malaria. Malaria is a protozoaninfectious disease that is generally transmitted to humans by mosquitoes between dusk and dawn. The European variety, known as "vivax" after the Plasmodium vivax parasite, causes a relatively mild, yet chronically aggravating disease. The west African variety is caused by the sporozoan parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and results in a severely debilitating and deadly disease.
Malaria was common in parts of the world where it has now
disappeared, as the vast majority of Europe (disease of African descent
are particularly diffused in the Empire romain) and North America . In
some parts of England, mortality due to malaria was comparable to that of sub-Saharan Africa today. Although William Shakespeare was born at the beginning of a colder period called the "Little Ice Age", he knew enough ravages of this disease to include in eight parts. Plasmodium vivax lasted until 1958 in the polders
of Belgium and the Netherlands.
In the 1500s, it was the European settlers and their slaves who probably
brought malaria on the American continent (we know that Columbus had
this disease before his arrival in the new land). The Spanish Jesuit missionaries saw the Indians bordering on Lake Loxa Peru used the Cinchona bark powder to treat fevers. However, there is no reference to malaria in the medical literature of the Maya or Aztecs.
The use of the bark of the "fever tree" was introduced into European
medicine by Jesuit missionaries whose Barbabe Cobo who experimented in
1632 and also by exports, which contributed to the precious powder also
being called "Jesuit powder". A study in 2012 of thousands of genetic
markers for Plasmodium falciparum samples confirmed the African origin
of the parasite in South America (Europeans themselves have been
affected by this disease through Africa): it borrowed from the
mid-sixteenth century and the mid-nineteenth the two main roads of the
slave trade, the first leading to the north of South America (Colombia)
by the Spanish, the second most leading south (Brazil) by Portugueses.
Parts of Third World
countries are more affected by malaria than the rest of the world. For
instance, many inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa are affected by
recurring attacks of malaria throughout their lives. In many areas of Africa, there is limited running water. The residents' use of wells and cisterns provides many sites for the breeding of mosquitoes and spread of the disease. Mosquitoes use areas of standing water like marshes, wetlands, and water drums to breed.
Tuberculosis
In 2007, the prevalence of TB per 100,000 people was highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, and was also relatively high in Asian countries like India.
The bacterium that causes tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is generally spread when an infected person coughs and another person inhales the bacteria. Once inhaled TB frequently grows in the lungs,
but can spread to any part of the body. Although TB is highly
contagious, in most cases the human body is able to fend off the
bacteria. But, TB can remain dormant
in the body for years, and become active unexpectedly. If and when the
disease does become active in the body, it can multiply rapidly, causing
the person to develop many symptoms including cough (sometimes with
blood), night sweats, fever, chest pains, loss of appetite and loss of
weight. This disease can occur in both adults and children and is
especially common among those with weak or undeveloped immune systems.
Tuberculosis (TB) has been one of history's greatest killers,
taking the lives of over 3 million people annually. It has been called
the "white plague". According to the WHO, approximately fifty percent of
people infected with TB today live in Asia. It is the most prevalent, life-threatening infection among AIDS patients. It has increased in areas where HIV seroprevalence is high.
Air travel
and the other methods of travel which have made global interaction
easier, have increased the spread of TB across different societies.
Luckily, the BCG vaccine was developed, which prevents TB meningitis and miliary TB
in childhood. But, the vaccine does not provide substantial protection
against the more virulent forms of TB found among adults. Most forms of
TB can be treated with antibiotics to kill the bacteria. The two
antibiotics most commonly used are rifampicin and isoniazid.
There are dangers, however, of a rise of antibiotic-resistant TB. The
TB treatment regimen is lengthy, and difficult for poor and disorganized
people to complete, increasing resistance of bacteria. Antibiotic-resistant TB is also known as "multidrug-resistant tuberculosis."
"Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis" is a pandemic that is on the rise.
Patients with MDR-TB are mostly young adults who are not infected with
HIV or have other existing illness. Due to the lack of health care
infrastructure in underdeveloped countries, there is a debate as to
whether treating MDR-TB will be cost effective or not. The reason is the
high cost of "second-line" antituberculosis medications. It has been
argued that the reason the cost of treating patients with MDR-TB is high
is because there has been a shift in focus in the medical field, in
particular the rise of AIDS, which is now the world's leading infectious
cause of death. Nonetheless, it is still important to put in the effort
to help and treat patients with "multidrug-resistant tuberculosis" in
poor countries.
HIV/AIDS
Estimated HIV/AIDS prevalence among young adults (15-49) by country as of 2008
HIV and AIDS are among the newest and deadliest diseases. According to the World Health Organization, it is unknown where the HIVvirus
originated, but it appeared to move from animals to humans. It may have
been isolated within many groups throughout the world. It is believed
that HIV arose from another, less harmful virus, that mutated and became
more virulent. The first two AIDS/HIV cases were detected in 1981. As
of 2013, an estimated 1.3 million persons in the United States were living with HIV or AIDS, almost 110,000 in the UK and an estimated 35 million people worldwide are living with HIV".
Despite efforts in numerous countries, awareness and prevention
programs have not been effective enough to reduce the numbers of new HIV
cases in many parts of the world, where it is associated with high
mobility of men, poverty and sexual mores among certain populations.
Uganda has had an effective program, however. Even in countries where
the epidemic has a very high impact, such as Eswatini and South Africa, a
large proportion of the population do not believe they are at risk of
becoming infected. Even in countries such as the UK, there is no
significant decline in certain at-risk communities. 2014 saw the
greatest number of new diagnoses in gay men, the equivalent of nine
being diagnosed a day.
Initially, HIV prevention methods focused primarily on preventing
the sexual transmission of HIV through behaviour change. The ABC
Approach - "Abstinence, Be faithful, Use a Condom". However, by the
mid-2000s, it became evident that effective HIV prevention requires more
than that and that interventions need to take into account underlying
socio-cultural, economic, political, legal and other contextual factors.
The Ebola outbreak, which was the 26th outbreak since 1976, started in Guinea in March 2014. The WHO warned that the number of Ebola patients could rise to 20,000, and said that it used $489m (£294m) to contain Ebola within six to nine months. The outbreak was accelerating. Medecins sans Frontieres has just opened a new Ebola hospital in Monrovia,
and after one week it is already a capacity of 120 patients. It said
that the number of patients seeking treatment at its new Monrovia centre
was increasing faster than they could handle both in terms of the
number of beds and the capacity of the staff, adding that it was
struggling to cope with the caseload in the Liberian capital. Lindis
Hurum, MSF's emergency coordinator in Monrovia, said that it was
humanitarian emergency and they needed a full-scale humanitarian
response. Brice de la Vinge,
MSF director of operations, said that it was not until five months
after the declaration of the Ebola outbreak that serious discussions
started about international leadership and coordination, and said that
it was not acceptable.
Leptospirosis
Leptospirosis, also known as the "rat fever" or "field fever" is an infection caused by Leptospira.
Symptoms can range from none to mild such as headaches, muscle pains,
and fevers; to severe with bleeding from the lungs or meningitis. Leptospira
is transmitted by both wild and domestic animals, most commonly by
rodents. It is often transmitted by animal urine or by water or soil
containing animal urine coming into contact with breaks in the skin,
eyes, mouth, or nose.
The countries with the highest reported incidence are located in the
Asia-Pacific region (Seychelles, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand) with
incidence rates over 10 per 1000,000 people s well as in Latin America
and the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, El Salvador,
Uruguay, Cuba, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) However, the rise in global travel and eco-tourism
has led to dramatic changes in the epidemiology of leptospirosis, and
travelers from around the world have become exposed to the threat of
leptospirosis. Despite decreasing prevalence of leptospirosis in endemic
regions, previously non-endemic countries are now reporting increasing
numbers of cases due to recreational exposure
International travelers engaged in adventure sports are directly
exposed to numerous infectious agents in the environment and now
comprise a growing proportion of cases worldwide.
The virus outbreak originated in Wuhan, China. It was first detected in December 2019, which is why scientists called it COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019). This outbreak has since caused a health issue in the city of Wuhan, China which evolved into a global pandemic. The World Health Organization officially declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
As of May 2020, scientists believe that COVID-19, a zoonotic disease, is linked to the wet markets in China.
Epidemiologists have also warned of the virus's contagiousness.
Specialists have declared that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is still
unknown. The generally accepted notion among virologists and experts is
that the action of inhaling droplets from an infected person is most
likely the way SARS-CoV-2 is spreading.
As more people travel and more goods and capital are traded globally,
COVID-19 cases started to slowly appear all over the world.
Some of the symptoms that COVID-19 patients could experience is shortness of breath (which might be a sign of pneumonia), cough, fever, and diarrhea. The three most recorded and common symptoms are fever, tiredness, and coughing, as reported by the World Health Organization. COVID-19 is also categorized among the viruses that can show no symptoms in the carrier. Asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers transmitted the virus to many people which eventually did show symptoms, some being deadly.
The first number of cases was detected in Wuhan, China, the origin of the outbreak.
On December 31, 2019, Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced to
the World Health Organization that the number of pneumonia cases that
have been previously detected in Wuhan, Hubei Province is now under
investigation.
Proper identification of a novel coronavirus was developed and
reported, making the pneumonia cases in China the first reported cases
of COVID-19. As of November 25, 2021, there have been around 260 million confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world. Confirmed deaths as a result of COVID-19 is over 5 million globally. Over 235 million of the 260 million confirmed COVID-19 cases have successfully recovered.
Countries showing lack of preparation and awareness in January and
February 2020 are now reporting the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases.
The United States leads the worldwide count with almost 49 million
confirmed cases. Deaths in The United States have crossed 798,000, maintaining the highest death count of any country.
Brazil, Russia, Spain, UK, and Italy have all suffered because of the
increase in cases, leading to an impaired health system unable to attend
to so many sick people at one time.
The first-ever confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was in Washington State on January 21, 2020.
It was a man who had just returned from China. Following this incident,
on January 31, 2020, Trump announced that travel to and from China is
restricted, effective on February 2, 2020. On March 11, 2020, Trump issues executive order to restrict travel from Europe, except for the UK and Ireland. On May 24, 2020, Trump bans travel from Brazil, as Brazil becomes the new center of the coronavirus pandemic.
International restrictions were set to decrease international entities
of entering a country, potentially carrying the virus. This is because
governments understand that with the accessibility in travel and free
trade, any person can travel and carry the virus to a new environment.
Recommendations to U.S.
travelers have been set by the State Department. As of March 19, 2020,
some countries have been marked Level 4 "do not travel". The coronavirus pandemic travel restrictions have affected almost 93% of the global population.
Increased travel restrictions effectively aid multilateral and
bilateral health organizations to control the number of confirmed cases
of COVID-19.
Non-communicable disease
Globalization can benefit people with non-communicable diseases such as heart problems or mental health problems. Global trade and rules set forth by the World Trade Organization
can actually benefit the health of people by making their incomes
higher, allowing them to afford better health care. While it has to be
admitted making many non-communicable diseases more likely as well. Also
the national income of a country, mostly obtained by trading on the
global market, is important because it dictates how much a government
spends on health care for its citizens. It also has to be acknowledged
that an expansion in the definition of disease often accompanies
development, so the net effect is not clearly beneficial due to this and
other effects of increased affluence. Metabolic syndrome is one obvious
example. Although poorer countries have not yet experienced this and
are still having the diseases listed above.
Economic globalization and disease
Globalization is multifaceted in implementation and is objective in the framework and systemic ideology. Infectious diseases spread mainly as a result of the modern globalization of many and almost all industries and sectors. Economic globalization is the interconnectivity of world economies and the interdependency of internal and external supply chains.
With the advancement of science and technology, the possibility of
economic globalization is enabled even more. Economic factors have been
defined by global boundaries rather than national. The cost of
activities of economic measures has been significantly decreased as a
result of the advancements in the fields of technology and science,
slowly creating an interconnected economy lacking centralized
integration.
As economies increase levels of integration and singularity within the
partnership, any global financial and economic disruptions would cause a
global recession.
Collateral damage is further observed with the increase in integrated
economic activity. Countries lean more on economic benefits than health
benefits, which lead to a miscalculated and ill-reported health issue.
Tropical diseases are diseases that are prevalent in or unique to tropical and subtropical regions. The diseases are less prevalent in temperate climates, due in part to the occurrence of a cold season, which controls the insect population by forcing hibernation.
However, many were present in northern Europe and northern America in
the 17th and 18th centuries before modern understanding of disease
causation. The initial impetus for tropical medicine was to protect the health of colonial settlers, notably in India under the British Raj. Insects such as mosquitoes and flies are by far the most common disease carrier, or vector. These insects may carry a parasite, bacterium
or virus that is infectious to humans and animals. Most often disease
is transmitted by an insect bite, which causes transmission of the
infectious agent through subcutaneous blood exchange. Vaccines are not available for most of the diseases listed here, and many do not have cures.
Human exploration of tropical rainforests, deforestation, rising
immigration and increased international air travel and other tourism to
tropical regions has led to an increased incidence of such diseases to
non-tropical countries. Of particular concern is the habitat loss of reservoir host species.
TDR's vision is to foster an effective global research effort on infectious diseases of poverty
in which disease endemic countries play a pivotal role. It has a dual
mission of developing new tools and strategies against these diseases,
and to develop the research and leadership capacity in the countries
where the diseases occur. The TDR secretariat is based in Geneva,
Switzerland, but the work is conducted throughout the world through many
partners and funded grants.
Some examples of work include helping to develop new treatments
for diseases, such as ivermectin for onchocerciasis (river blindness);
showing how packaging can improve use of artemesinin-combination
treatment (ACT) for malaria; demonstrating the effectiveness of bednets
to prevent mosquito bites and malaria; and documenting how
community-based and community-led programmes increases distribution of
multiple treatments. TDR history
The current TDR disease portfolio includes the following entries:
Some tropical diseases are very rare, but may occur in sudden epidemics, such as the Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever and the Marburg virus. There are hundreds of different tropical diseases which are less known or rarer, but that, nonetheless, have importance for public health.
Relation of climate to tropical diseases
The
so-called "exotic" diseases in the tropics have long been noted both by
travelers, explorers, etc., as well as by physicians. One obvious
reason is that the hot climate present during all the year and the
larger volume of rains directly affect the formation of breeding
grounds, the larger number and variety of natural reservoirs and animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans (zoonosis), the largest number of possible insect vectors
of diseases. It is possible also that higher temperatures may favor the
replication of pathogenic agents both inside and outside biological
organisms. Socio-economic factors may be also in operation, since most
of the poorest nations of the world are in the tropics. Tropical
countries like Brazil, which have improved their socio-economic
situation and invested in hygiene, public health and the combat of transmissible diseases have achieved dramatic results in relation to the elimination or decrease of many endemic tropical diseases in their territory.
Climate change, global warming caused by the greenhouse effect,
and the resulting increase in global temperatures, are possibly causing
tropical diseases and vectors to spread to higher altitudes in
mountainous regions, and to higher latitudes that were previously
spared, such as the Southern United States, the Mediterranean area, etc. For example, in the Monteverde cloud forest of Costa Rica, global
warming enabled Chytridiomycosis, a tropical disease, to flourish and
thus force into decline amphibian populations of the Monteverde
Harlequin frog.
Here, global warming raised the heights of orographic cloud formation,
and thus produced cloud cover that would facilitate optimum growth
conditions for the implicated pathogen, B. dendrobatidis.
Vectors
are living organisms that pass disease between humans or from animal to
human. The vector carrying the highest number of diseases is the
mosquito, which is responsible for the tropical diseases dengue and
malaria.
Many different approaches have been taken to treat and prevent these
diseases. NIH-funded research has produced genetically modify mosquitoes
that are unable to spread diseases such as malaria.
An issue with this approach is global accessibility to genetic
engineering technology; Approximately 50% of scientists in the field do
not have access to information on genetically modified mosquito trials
being conducted.
Other prevention methods include:
Draining wetlands to reduce populations of insects and other vectors, or introducing natural predators of the vectors.
The use of a mosquito net over a bed (also known as a "bed net") to reduce nighttime transmission, since certain species of tropical mosquitoes feed mainly at night.
Community approaches
Assisting
with economic development in endemic regions can contribute to
prevention and treatment of tropical diseases. For example, microloans enable communities to invest in health programs that lead to more effective disease treatment and prevention technology.
Educational campaigns can aid in the prevention of various
diseases. Educating children about how diseases spread and how they can
be prevented has proven to be effective in practicing preventative
measures. Educational campaigns can yield significant benefits at low costs.
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