Factors in the Emergence of Infectious Diseases

Abstract

In 1989, a new branch of medicine was born, one which would turn on its head previous scientific and lay thinking about infectious diseases and would mark an end to the optimism that had previously characterised the conquest of infectious diseases. This creation of this new category — ‘emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases’ — represents a tectonic shift in biomedical thinking and has became increasingly central to the way policy-makers, the media and the general public conceptualise infectious disease. Who were the authors of this new category? What were the concerns that prompted its creation and what were social and political forces that lay behind it?