The National Academies
What You Need To Know About Infectious Disease
Prevention & Treatment
Vaccines & Medicines
Medicines have existed in human society probably as long as sickness itself. However, with the advent of the modern pharmaceutical industry, biochemical approaches to preventing and treating disease have acquired a new level of prominence in the evolving relationship between microbes and their human hosts.
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Disease Watchlist
What do you know about infectious disease?
True or False: The only way public health agencies can deal with infectious disease is to have good surveillance in place, wait for an outbreak to happen in a human population, and then rush to contain it.
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Sorry, that’s incorrect.
By identifying pathogens in the animals where they naturally live and monitoring those organisms as they move from animals into people, it may be possible to prevent deadly new infections of animal origin from entering and racing through human populations.
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Correct!
By identifying pathogens in the animals where they naturally live and monitoring those organisms as they move from animals into people, it may be possible to prevent deadly new infections of animal origin from entering and racing through human populations.
Infectious Disease Defined
- Vaccine
A biological preparation that improves the immune system’s ability to recognize and destroy harmful infectious agents.
National Academies Press
Search the National Academies Press website by selecting one of these related terms.
Source Material
- Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality (2011)
- The Domestic and International Impacts of the 2009-H1N1 Influenza A Pandemic: Global Challenges, Global Solutions—Workshop Summary (2010)
- The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control: Exploring the Consequences and Opportunities—Workshop Summary (2006)
- The Smallpox Vaccination Program: Public Health in an Age of Terrorism (2005)
- Financing Vaccines in the 21st Century: Assuring Access and Availability (2003)
