Rage

More and more people are being caught up in a growing number of natural disasters

The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction said the increase in numbers vulnerable to natural shocks was due partly to global warming. It said 254 million people were affected by natural hazards in 2003 [the numbers for 2004 and 2005 should be significantly higher] - nearly three times as many as in 1990.

Events including earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and droughts, storms, fires and landslides killed about 83,000 people in 2003, up from about 53,000 deaths 13 years earlier, the ISDR said. Releasing its statistics jointly with the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (Cred) at the University of Louvain in Belgium, it said there was a consistent trend over the last decade of an increasing number of people affected by disasters. There were 337 natural disasters reported in 2003, up from 261 in 1990. "Not only is the world globally facing more potential disasters but increasing numbers of people are becoming vulnerable to hazards," the ISDR said. The problems, it said, are exacerbated because more and more people are living in concentrated urban areas and in slums with poor building standards and a lack of facilities. ISDR director Salvano Briceno added that urban migrants tended to settle on exposed stretches of land either on seismic faults, flooding plains or on landslide-prone slopes. "The urban concentration, the effects of climate change and the environmental degradation are greatly increasing vulnerability," he said. "Alarmingly, this is getting worse."

Faster emergence for diseases

New infectious diseases are now emerging at an exceptional rate, scientists have told a leading conference in St Louis, US. Humans are accumulating new pathogens at a rate of one per year, they said. Most of these new infectious diseases, such as avian influenza and HIV/Aids, are coming from other animals. "This accumulation of new pathogens has been going on for millennia - this is how we acquired TB, malaria, smallpox," said Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University Of Edinburgh, UK. "But at the moment, this accumulation does seem to be happening very fast. We're going to have to run as fast as we can to stay in the same place. So it seems there is something special about modern times - these are good times for pathogens to be invading the human population." Professor Woolhouse has catalogued more than 1,400 different agents of disease in humans; and every year, scientists are discovering one or two new ones.

Some may have been around for a long time and have only just come to light. Others that have emerged recently are entirely new, such as HIV; the virus that causes Sars, and the agent of vCJD. The difference today, say researchers, is the way humans are interacting with other animals in their environment. Changes in land use through, for example, deforestation can bring humans into contact with new pathogens; and, likewise, agricultural changes, such as the use of exotic livestock. Other important drivers include global travel, global trade and hospitalisation.

The fast rate at which pathogens are appearing means public health experts will need to work harder than ever to control the spread of emerging disease threats. "Pathogens are evolving ways to combat our control methods. The picture is changing and looks as if it will continue to."