What emerging infectious diseases tell us about changes in society and medicine

The past half-century has seen an unprecedented number of new, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, largely facilitated by anthropological factors (the Anthropocene), including ecological changes often secondary to economic and dietary factors (development of intensive farming and livestock breeding). These changes are increasing the number of interfaces with the animal world (zoonoses, " one world-one health "). These emergences, which often involve a founding event of species jumping, are amplified to pandemic scale by the sustained increase in the world's human population, poverty, inadequate healthcare systems, uncontrolled urbanization, the globalization of trade and mass travel. Another worrying aspect of the emergence of infectious diseases is the worldwide spread of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The emergence of infectious diseases is not specific to low-income regions. In industrialized countries, the complex architecture of housing and hospitals, the industrial food chain, travel to endemic regions and ecological and climatic changes are driving the spread of vector-borne populations (mosquitoes, ticks).