ABSTRACT
Emerging and reemerging pathogens continue to maintain a constant presence in the world, presenting new challenges to health care workers and scientists. Some of these pathogens are also considered potential weapons of mass destruction (“select agents”) or cause exotic diseases, placing them with classic agents of concern such as anthrax and smallpox. Pathogens have the ability to cause epidemics, and with global travel and intermixing populations, the possibility for large pandemics is an ever-present concern. Many select agents are prevalent in the world, still causing disease in many people every year. Some pathogens that have been relatively well controlled have developed resistance to antibiotics and other drugs used to treat disease. The deliberate release of an agent or emergence of a new strain or organism could lead to the rapid spread of a disease throughout the world before the health care system realized there was a problem: The recent severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is an excellent example of the phenomenon. The possibility of this scenario has led the scientifi c, health care, and public health communities to look outside their realms of expertise and develop collaborations with each other. These groups now realize that rapid, coordinated recognition of an outbreak, whether natural or deliberate, is essential for its control.
