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Pandemics of the world

Pandemics of the world

Posted by IASbaba
Categories UPSC Articles
Date March 27, 2020
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Pandemics of the world

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Health; GS III – Economy; Disaster Management

In News:

COVID-19 is the most recent disease which was declared as pandemic by the World Health Organization.

A glimpse through major pandemics of the world which caused huge loss to life:

The Plague of Justinian	It killed between 30 million and 50 million people. The cause of the Plague of Justinian was infectious fever caused by Yersinia pestis.
Black death	Between 1347 and 1351, it spread throughout Europe, killing approximately 25 million people. It is believed to have been the result of plague – an infectious fever caused by bacterium Yersinia pestis. It was likely transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas.
Smallpox (15th – 17th centuries)	Smallpox claimed the lives of approximately 20 million people, close to 90% of the population, in the Americas. The pandemic helped Europeans colonize and develop the newly vacated areas. Smallpox is caused by infection with the variola virus transmitted through various ways.
Cholera (1817 – 1823)	The first cholera pandemic began in Jessore, India. It was the first of 7 major cholera pandemics that have killed millions of people. The World Health Organization has called cholera “the forgotten pandemic”. Its seventh outbreak, which began in 1961, continues to this day. It is caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio cholera.
Spanish Flu or H1N1 (1918 – 1919)	It is caused due to H1N1 virus. It infected around 500 million people, or a third of the world’s population, of that time. The pandemic was responsible for killing over 50 million people globally.
Hong Kong Flu or H3N2 (1968 – 1970)	Global fatalities were around one million. It was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus. It is believed that the virus responsible for the Asian flu evolved and re-emerged 10 years later into this so-called “Hong Kong flu”. H3N2 was exceptionally contagious.
HIV/AIDS (1981 – present)	Since 1981, 75 million people have had the HIV virus and approximately 32 million have died as a result. HIV/AIDS is a persistent epidemic that continues to impact millions of people every year. The HIV infection is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The virus can be transmitted through contact with infected blood, semen or vaginal fluids.
SARS (2002 – 2003)	SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, is an illness caused by one of the 7 coronaviruses that can infect humans. In 2003, an outbreak that originated in the Guangdong province of China became a global pandemic. It infected around 8,000 people and killing 774 of them. The consequences of the 2003 SARS pandemic were largely limited due to an intense public health response by global authorities.
Swine Flu or H1N1 (2009 – 2010)	It was a new form of the influenza virus which emerged in 2009. It infected approximately millions of people with global deaths in the range of 151,700 to 575,400. It is called the “swine flu” because it appeared to cross over from pigs to humans in transmission. 80% of the virus-related deaths occured in people younger than 65.
Ebola (2014 – 2016)	It began in a small village in Guinea in 2014 and spread to a handful of neighbouring countries in West Africa. It is caused by infection with a virus of the Filoviridae family, genus Ebolavirus. The virus killed 11,325 of the 28,600 infected people, with most cases occurring in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Coronavirus, or COVID-19 (2019 – present)	Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. Worldwide cases have surpassed 500,000 with more than 24,000 deaths globally. It is believed to be transmitted from animals to humans. The vast majority of cases are reported from USA now. On March 11, the WHO characterized the outbreak as a pandemic. Estimates indicate that Coronavirus could eventually infect 40% to 70% of the global population. Practicing social distancing is recommended. The damage to the world economy threaten the worst recession since the Great Depression or the “panics” of the 1800s, depending on the scale of government responses.