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This spring, over 300 people dining at the venerable Harvard Faculty Club became ill with a norovirus,. The infection can be transmitted directly from person to person, but it is far more often spread through food which has been contaminated with the germs of someone infected with the disease.
The odds a person will be diagnosed with tetanus in a year are 1 in 7,302,000. You’re more than twice as likely to die falling out of a tree (1 in 3,290,000).
In Germany circa 1812, a Dr. Justinus Kerner—a physician and poet—began to notice an unusual phenomenon. Dozens of villagers (76 by Kerner's count) in the town of Welzheim were coming down with a mysterious illness.
Meningitis outbreaks make headlines for two reasons. First, the disease can progress at breakneck speed. Some who catch it initially seem only mildly sick; hours later, they are hospitalized—often facing life-threatening complications like vein collapse, gangrene, and organ failure.
In the spring of 1981, physicians in California and New York City became alarmed at the sudden appearance of multiple infections and oddly weakened immune systems among a small group of previously healthy gay men. The median survival rate of those men was 12 months.
It’s annoying to hear the high, thin whine of a mosquito just as you’re falling asleep and realize that you may wake up scratching. On the upside, you have virtually no chance of contracting malaria—not if you live in the United States, anyway.
It was once a rite of childhood—like your first sleepover or learning to ride a bike. Children could virtually count on spending one miserable week at home with chickenpox.
The 5 most lethal diseases in history currently pose little threat to the US. From the list, tuberculosis is the one you're most likely to catch, and even the odds of that are slim.
It's no fun having hepatitis. Your liver—the largest organ in your body besides your skin—swells up, perhaps until your abdomen is tender to the touch.
Maybe he’s inspired by his name: Tim Brewer likes to know exactly what’s brewing. As an expert on surveillance of emerging diseases, he has worked with doctors around the globe to understand the implications of new outbreaks and to counter widespread infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. As former Program Director for the International Society for Infectious Diseases, Brewer oversaw training and service programs that reached approximately 50,000 physicians, scientists, and public health officials in over 160 countries worldwide.
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