Global disease outbreaks — 2018
When epidemiologists alert you to a “disease outbreak”, they could be referring to something that you might consider an exception. In the parlance of epidemiologists, “a disease outbreak is the occurrence of cases of disease in excess of what would normally be expected in a defined community, geographical area or season. An outbreak may occur in a restricted geographical area, or may extend over several countries. It may last for a few days or weeks, or for several years.
A single case of a communicable disease long absent from a population, or caused by an agent (e.g. bacterium or virus) not previously recognized in that community or area, or the emergence of a previously unknown disease, may also constitute an outbreak and should be reported and investigated.” — World Health Organization (WHO)
The table below was created on GitHub using information as of May 31, 2018 from the WHO, showing that at any given time on our hyper-connected planet, there’s a disease outbreak somewhere.
