Such headlines shouldn't surprise us. But Americans have become complacent about infectious disease. In the 1980s, our world began to change. The Ebola virus. Image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control.
Infectious diseases are survivors.
They are invisible, capable of changing form, traveling great distances, disguising their identity and masking their power. For many today, the threat of infectious diseases, including AIDS, appears very new and very unsettling. A threat to the whole public health structure has been identified and when you get a complete picture of what this means, it's very alarming. According to UW experts from the newly formed Emerging Diseases Working Group, deadly, exotic diseases should not be your greatest worry. With the security blanket of antibiotics becoming threadbare, an estimated 13,000 deaths in the United States each year are attributed to antibiotic-resistant infections.