Welkom bij het Lymeforum

Ebola, Dengue fever, Lyme disease: The growing economic cost of infectious diseases
Five new such diseases expected each year; strategies to reduce climate change adaptable to infectious diseases
December 16, 2014

Emerging pandemic disease outbreaks such as Ebola increasingly threaten global public health and world economies, scientists say. We can expect five new such diseases each year, into the future.

And expect them to spread.


Scientists at EcoHealth Alliance in New York and other organizations studied the economic cost of such global disease outbreaks.

Economists, disease ecologists and others collaborated on an in-depth economic analysis of strategies to address pandemic threats in a proactive way--rather than a reactive response to a crisis. The results are published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Our research shows that new approaches to reducing emerging pandemic threats at the source would be more cost-effective than trying to mobilize a global response after a disease has emerged," says Peter Daszak, senior author of the paper and president of EcoHealth Alliance.

"The current Ebola epidemic highlights the need to anticipate possible health threats from these changes," says Scheiner. "This study shows that the long-term economic benefits outweigh the short-term costs, not to mention the human benefits of preventing the next pandemic."