Pandemic

When an epidemic of a highly contagious disease spreads across a large region (even worldwide) it is called a pandemic. It is different from a widespread endemic disease that infects a sizable population across the world simultaneously, such as influenza. It is different from a disease like cancer, which also has thousands, but is not contagious. Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General and interim for Health Security and Environment, WHO, has said: “An easy way to think about pandemic ... is to say a pandemic is a global outbreak. Then you might ask yourself ‘what is a global outbreak?’ A global outbreak means that we see both the spread of the agent ... and then we see disease activities in addition to the spread of the virus.” The Black Death or Plague, which ravaged the world in the 14th century, is believed to have been the most fatal pandemic in history; it killed approximately 75 to 200 million people. Some other pandemics that affected a huge population across the world are tuberculosis, the Russian flu, the Asian flu, Cholera, the Hong Kong flu, and the most recent and ongoing coronavirus pandemic. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25 percent. “The information we have now about the impact of COVID-19 on the world’s mental health is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. More