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“I am optimistic that in the next decade, people’s thinking will evolve on the question of health inequity. People will finally accept that the death of a child in the developing world is just as tragic as the death of a child in the developed world. And the expanding capacities of science will give us the power to act on that conviction.” Bill Gates, Jr. Speaking at the 2005 World Health Assembly

© Wang Haiyan/China Features/Corbis; from “Rx for Survival”With the growing movement of people and goods across the globe, communicable diseases have become a mounting concern for all—witness current media attention to the avian flu or the 2003 SARS scare. What may be an isolated incident in a village in Southeast Asia today can become a global pandemic tomorrow. The globalization of disease is one reason why the international community—through organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO)—has tried proactively to stop potential outbreaks at their source.

Despite overwhelming media attention paid to emerging infectious diseases like avian flu, the number of people currently affected by these diseases is actually very low compared to many other less publicized dangers. When such global health threats do emerge, however, collaboration between research institutions, national governments, international organizations, the private sector, and citizens is vital and can make an important difference, especially where strong health systems are not in place.

Consider the campaign against smallpox. A highly infectious disease that dated back to ancient Egypt, smallpox was one of the world’s deadliest killers, taking hundreds of millions of lives in the 20th Century. Thanks to worldwide collaboration on containing the disease, it has now been completely eradicated. The international community’s efforts to combat river blindness in sub-Saharan Africa and eliminate polio in Latin America are among other notable achievements. (See “Lessons Learned” for many more success stories.)

Indeed, globally speaking, life expectancy has increased more over the past 50 years than at any other time in history. But one’s chances of living a long and healthy life often depend on one’s access to health care, and many lives—particularly in developing countries—continue to be cut short by infectious diseases. Nearly three million people died as a result of HIV/AIDS in 2005, and some 40 million continue to live with the virus—most in Africa. Over 1.6 million succumbed to tuberculosis last year, and nearly one million died from malaria.

Many international and civil society groups have focused their attention on combating these three diseases. Yet there are other significant health threats that—in combination with the effects of poverty—are taking even heavier tolls. In many cases though, millions could still be saved with simple interventions.

A Worldwide Survey

Nearly 11 million children under the age of five still die every year from diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, and other childhood diseases. That's as many as all those under five currently living in the 10 largest U.S. states combined: from California on down to New Jersey. The good news is that only decades ago this figure was far higher and many more lives are now being saved due to dramatic increases in global immunization programs. From 1977 to 1990, for example, the number of children under 12-months immunized worldwide increased from five percent to 75 percent.

© Source: Nova Independent Resources, Ltd.“The global community has learned how to effectively and efficiently deliver affordable vaccination programs at scale,” explains Robert Steinglass, an international advisor who has consulted on immunization programs with Ministries of Health and other organizations in over 50 countries. “We already know how to vaccinate children even in the most crowded urban slums, most impenetrable jungles, and most inaccessible mountain villages.”

But despite coordinated efforts to equip the world’s children with basic vaccines to prevent common causes of death like measles and tetanus, funding for child survival has remained stagnant in recent years. With a global focus on AIDS and other high-profile killers, short shrift is being given to longer-term, lower-profile campaigns to vaccinate children. More than two million children a year are still dying from vaccine-preventable diseases, notes UNICEF.

Although costs for administering oral rehydration liquids can vary widely, this is another simple solution that can cure the diarrhea that killed almost 1.7 million children in 2005. Better pre-natal, delivery, and post-natal care for mothers and infants could also significantly reduce the approximately four million deaths that occur annually during the first month of life. The international community recognized these problems when, at a global conference in September 2000, heads of state committed themselves to eight Millennium Development Goals. Two of the eight goals focus on achieving major reductions in childhood and maternal mortality by 2015. A 2005 report on these goals notes good progress in some countries, but cites ongoing high death tolls among women and children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

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