The National Academies
What You Need To Know About Infectious Disease
Prevention & Treatment
International Cooperation
National borders are trivial impediments to infectious disease threats. In the highly interconnected and readily traversed global village of our time, one nation’s problem soon becomes every nation’s problem. Therefore, strategies must be implemented worldwide, not just nationally, in order to have a true impact.
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Disease Watchlist
What do you know about infectious disease?
True or False: Major pharmaceutical companies have great interest in dedicating resources to the antibiotics market because these short-course drugs are more profitable than drugs that treat chronic conditions and lifestyle ailments, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
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Sorry, that’s incorrect.
Drugs that treat chronic conditions and lifestyle ailments are more profitable. Modern medicine needs new kinds of antibiotics to treat drug-resistant infections, but antibiotic research and development are expensive, risky, and time-consuming.
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Correct!
Drugs that treat chronic conditions and lifestyle ailments are more profitable. Modern medicine needs new kinds of antibiotics to treat drug-resistant infections, but antibiotic research and development are expensive, risky, and time-consuming.
Infectious Disease Defined
- Cytokine
A type of protein secreted by cells in the immune system that carries signals used to communicate locally between cells.
National Academies Press
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Source Material
- Infectious Disease Movement in a Borderless World—Workshop Summary (2010)
- Global Issues in Water, Sanitation, and Health—Workshop Summary (2009)
- Sustaining Global Surveillance and Response to Emerging Zoonotic Diseases (2009)
- The U.S. Commitment to Global Health: Recommendations for the Public and Private Sectors (2009)
- Achieving Sustainable Global Capacity for Surveillance and Response to Emerging Diseases of Zoonotic Origin—Workshop Summary (2008)
- Global Infectious Disease Surveillance and Detection: Assessing the Challenges, Finding Solutions—Workshop Summary (2007)
- Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance (2004)
