Emerging Diseases–What Now?

摘要

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) was born in 1902 out of concern for the spread of infectious diseases. The outbreak of cholera in Hamburg in 1892 and the epidemics of yellow fever in the Americas led to the decision to establish the International Sanitary Bureau with permanent headquarters in Washington. At the conference that made this historic decision in 1902, participating countries agreed to cooperate with each other and transmit to the bureau “all data of every character relative to the sanitary conditions of their ports and territories and furnish said Bureau every opportunity and aid for a thorough and careful study and investigation of any outbreaks of pestilential disease.” All this was to be done to provide the “widest possible protection of the public health of each of the said republics and that commerce between said republics may be facilitated.”