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April 04, 2003

Pandemics of Mass Destruction

Here we have a war about the possibility, the possibility, of weapons of mass destruction such as biological weapons. Yet even as the US is spending what will likely be hundreds of billions of dollars on war with Iraq, we don't deal with the basic health infrastructure that TODAY allows pandemics to sweep through the world.

With the SARS disease already identified with 2,200 cases in 16 countries, it is threatening to become a pandemic around the world. Seven people have died of it in Toronto as it becomes clear that the most industrialized populations are vulnerable in a world where diseases incubate and build up critical mass in poor countries without strong infrastructures to fight disease.

As this UK government study emphasizes, the world is systematically neglecting spending on a range of diseases globally, where just ten to twenty billion more per year, would address these problems far more systematically.

Posted by Nathan at April 4, 2003 08:50 AM

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