ABSTRACT
As with famines and hunger, however, major epidemics and pandemics (inter - national epidemics) of diseases represent only dramatic periodic escalations of an underlying and persistent threat. Tables 7.1 and 7.2 give an indication of the scale of this threat, the greatest challenge of all to human security. By the end of the 1970s there was optimism that humanity’s war against disease was being won. Disease is an enemy of humanity which can probably never be entirely defeated, but in the decades which followed the Second World War a growing belief emerged that scientific and medical advances could eliminate many diseases and at least contain the others. The attack was led by the use of synthetic (organic) insecticides, following the 1939 discovery of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), against disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes and tsetse-flies. The defence against disease was strengthened by significant medical advances which discovered and refined antibiotics, such as long-acting penicillin, which could directly attack the microbes themselves or immunize whole vulnerable populations against threatening diseases. Coordinating this joint strategy was a new global body set up as part of the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO).
