Emerging Viral Diseases

Viral infections are an important part of human diseases, posing global challenges and causing pandemic over the years. Recent outbreaks have adversely affected the global economy and raised critical issues regarding occurrence, prevention, diagnosis, treatments and management of emerging viral diseases. Viral infections have been associated with several other diseases including hepatocellular carcinoma, diabetes mellitus and Alzheimer’s disease, among others. Medicinal plants are diverse in their composition and contain many important secondary metabolites, which have been used to treat several diseases, including viral infections. Emerging diseases such as SARS, H1N1; H7N9 ‘swine flu’, MERS, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, chikungunya, Zika and recently COVID-19 have been managed using herbal medicine. A more challenging aspect of viral infection is the reemerging infectious viral diseases, which continue to threaten humanity. Most emerging or reemerging viral diseases lack preventive vaccines and efficient treatments; thus, viral infection should be considered top priority for the research community.