Plague: past, present and future

[Introduction] Recent experience with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) [1] and avian flu shows that the public and political response to threats from new anthropozoonoses can be near-hysteria. This can readily make us forget more classical animal-borne diseases, such as plague (Box 1). Three...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PeerJ
Main Authors: Stenseth, Nils Chr., Atshabar, Bakyt B., Begon, Mike, Belmain, Steven R., Bertherat, Eric, Carniel, Elisabeth, Gage, Kenneth L., Leirs, Herwig, Rahalison, Lila
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science 2008
Subjects:
RC Internal medicine
QR Microbiology
RA Public aspects of medicine
Avian flu
Online Access:http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/2160/
http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/2160/1/%28ITEM_2160%29_BELMAIN_PLoS_%282008%29.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050003
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Summary:[Introduction] Recent experience with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) [1] and avian flu shows that the public and political response to threats from new anthropozoonoses can be near-hysteria. This can readily make us forget more classical animal-borne diseases, such as plague (Box 1). Three recent international meetings on plague (Box 2) concluded that: (1) it should be re-emphasised that the plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis) still causes several thousand human cases per year [2,3] (Figure 1); (2) locally perceived risks far outstrip the objective risk based purely on the number of cases [2]; (3) climate change might increase the risk of plague outbreaks where plague is currently endemic and new plague areas might arise [2,4]; (4) remarkably little is known about the dynamics of plague in its natural reservoirs and hence about changing risks for humans [5]; and, therefore, (5) plague should be taken much more seriously by the international community than appears to be the case.

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