Many areas, including Australia, Brazil, and Venezuela, recently suffered their first epidemics of the disease. The disease also has appeared in the southern United States. Second among the top ten killers, they are responsible for some 3 million deaths among children every year. Contaminated water, used by half the world's people, is a leading cause. Preventing the sunken-eyed coma of dehydration that marks these ailments requires only an oral rehydration solution simply prepared at home from glucose, salt, and water.
Clean water prevents the ailments.
Some spread as settlers and commercial interests invade previously remote lands. Spotlighted in the media for frightening virulence, these ailments remain rare, though threatening. Modern transportation, carrying more than 500 million international travelers annually, places all diseases a day away from anywhere in a global village for microbes as well as for humanity. It is untreatable. Ebola virus is transmitted by body fluids, but researchers fear a mutation that could travel through the air.