Ebola warrants media attention but ‘regular’ epidemics of tropical infectious diseases deserve coverage too!

Infectious disease pandemics cause concern and captivate the imagination in equal measure. Public fear of the unexpected, unknown and seemingly uncontrollable is fostered by news agencies and social media as well as exploited by film and television dramas. In Western culture there is a compelling narrative that surrounds our morbid fascination with the major global disease outbreaks of the past century, from Spanish flu in 1918 to Zika in 2015. However, in truth the public health threat posed by the likes of SARS, swine flu and Ebola, to name but three pandemics of recent times, pales in comparison to the toll on human life extracted by continual epidemics of other infectious diseases caused by pathogens that have emerged over human history and with which we have come to uneasily co-exist. Malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, HIV/AIDS and, increasingly, dengue pose major risks to global health and wellbeing, particularly to people in developing nations within tropical zones of the world.