For every microbe which causes disease in humans there are thousands of others which do us no harm and may even be of great benefit. The aim of this workshop was to establish a dialogue on how we might explain the costs and benefits of the microbial world. Children should be educated about harmful microbes and the importance of good hygiene. They must understand the value of the sometimes painful experience of vaccination. However they should also see that microbes define the very nature and qualities of many of our foods.
Microbes are important to the agricultural, mining, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
We began by considering infectious diseases from an international perspective. Although diseases such as AIDS and Ebola fever have had significant press exposure, tuberculosis, malaria and acute respiratory infections continue to be responsible for many more deaths each year. Measles, tetanus and whooping cough kill more people than HIV, and approximately 3 million of the estimated 4 billion of cases of diarrhoeal diseases result in death. The evolution of so-called new, or perhaps more accurately, newly emerging viruses was discussed. The newly recognised viruses follow many of the rules of transmission that have been established for diseases for which we now have preventative measures.