Outbreaks of infectious diseases are constantly featured in our daily news report.
Barrett et al (1998) examine the problem of emerging infectious disease and point out that
the recent resurgence of infectious disease mortality marks the third epidemiologic
transition. Distinctive to the first, which associated with a rise in infectious diseases during
the Neolithic Revolution, and the second, which involved the shift form infectious to chronic
disease associated with industrialization, the third epidemioligic transition is characterized
by newly emerging, re-emerging, and antibiotic resistant pathogens in the context of an
accelerated globalization. Early notice of the rise of infectious disease was issued by a
number of studies showing an ominous resurgence of morbidity and mortality from new and
old infectious diseases (Lederberg et al 1992; Morse 1995) and the growing multidrug
resistant strains of pathogens (Lewis 1994). Pinner et al (1996) reveal that in the US, ageadjusted
mortality from infectious disease has increased by 40% from 1980 to 1992, while
the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has complied a list of 29
pathogens that have emerged since 1973 (Satcher 1995)