Yes, the world faces its first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years.

The rates of these two diseases are showing a tendency to increase in the years 2000 and 2001 and, as a consequence, they appear as epidemics.

The interruption of disease transmission is most effective where there is good prediction of the onset of epidemic outbreaks.

The spectre of avian flu threatens parts of Asia and Europe and the disease could become a global pandemic.

By late June 2005, 392 cases and 354 deaths had been recorded, making it the deadliest and most intense outbreak of Marburg fever ever.

But he placed the likelihood of one such event above all others at close to 100 percent, and that is a severe flu pandemic.

But so would the appearance of a new virulent pandemic disease in a poor country with no effective health care system.

Kuwait proposes to add a clinical epidemiological component that would involve the physical examination of 5 to 10 per cent of the subjects at five year intervals.

Mauritanian doctor Moktar Ould Weddih casts doubts on his Facebook about the real reason behind deaths. According to him it is not the heatwave but a pandemic disease

Indeed, most Latin American countries far exceed the threshold of 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants that the World Health Organization uses to define an epidemic level of violence.

Recently, the US Senate approved spending 8 billion to stockpile vaccines and other drugs to help prevent a possible bird flu epidemic. Other governments have already spent tens of millions on vaccines and other preventive measures.

For example, the first smallpox epidemic was recorded in Egypt in 1350 BC. It reached China in 49 AD, Europe after 700, the Americas in 1520, and Australia in l789.