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Management

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The basic strategies in the control of an outbreak are containment and mitigation . Containment may be undertaken in the early stages of the outbreak, including contact tracing and isolating infected individuals to stop the disease from spreading to the rest of the population, other public health interventions on infection control, and therapeutic countermeasures such as vaccinations which may be effective if available. When it becomes apparent that it is no longer possible to contain the spread of the disease, management will then move on to the mitigation stage, in which measures are taken to slow the spread of the disease and mitigate its effects on society and the healthcare system. In reality, containment and mitigation measures may be undertaken simultaneously. A key part of managing an infectious disease outbreak is trying to decrease the epidemic peak, known as "flattening the epidemic curve". This helps decrease the risk of health services being overwhelmed, and pro...
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Current pandemics

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HIV/AIDS edit Although the WHO uses the term "global epidemic" to describe HIV ( "WHO HIV/AIDS Data and Statistics" . Retrieved 12 April 2020 . ), as HIV is no longer an uncontrollable outbreak outside of Africa, some authors use the term "pandemic". HIV originated in Africa, and spread to the United States via Haiti between 1966 and 1972. AIDS is currently a pandemic in Africa, with infection rates as high as 25% in southern and eastern Africa. In 2006, the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women in South Africa was 29%. Effective education about safer sexual practices and bloodborne infection precautions training have helped to slow down infection rates in several African countries sponsoring national education programs. citation needed In 2017, approximately 1 million people in the United States had HIV; 14% did not realize that they were infected. COVID-19 edit A new strain of coronavirus was first identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, Ch...
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Notable outbreaks

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This section needs expansion with: Dengue fever. You can help by adding to it. ( June 2020 ) In human history, it is generally zoonoses such as influenza and tuberculosis which constitute most of the widespread outbreaks, resulting from the domestication of animals. There have been a number of particularly significant epidemics that deserve mention above the "mere" destruction of cities: Plague of Athens (430 to 426 BC): During the Peloponnesian War, typhoid fever killed a quarter of the Athenian troops and a quarter of the population. This disease fatally weakened the dominance of Athens, but the sheer virulence of the disease prevented its wider spread; i.e. it killed off its hosts at a rate faster than they could spread it. The exact cause of the plague was unknown for many years. In January 2006, researchers from the University of Athens analyzed teeth recovered from a mass grave underneath the city and confirmed the presence of bacteria responsible for typhoid. Antonin...
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