The New Infectious Risk
Doctor Ducel shows us, alas, that far from having disappeared, the risks from infectious disease are increasing :
– old ones are surging back (tuberculosis in particular), primarily due to relaxation of efforts to detect and prevent, but also because disease organisms find the right host for spreading (more than two billion people could be struck down by TB!) ;
– infections contracted in hospital, called nosocomial infections, have soared to unprecedented heights, not only because of contaminated blood transfusions but for multiple other reasons the account of which is alarming ;
– new agents of infectious risk, moreover, appear to be resistant to the antibiotics on which we rested so much hope : whether because these medications are administered wrongly and everywhere, or, evolution being still more worrisome, because new pathogenic micro-organisms are spreading, bacteria which “develop muscles” to resist antibiotics or transform themselves to overcome the defenses of man and his pharmaceutical arsenal.
The new infectious risks throw a major challenge at medicine and pharmacology. It is heavy with consequences for sanitation and social planning, but also with economic and scientific implications. The author explains them in a manner that is both convincing and worrying.
