The world is still battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout history, humans on Earth have experienced various disease outbreaks and pandemics.
Apart from COVID-19, our Earth has been hit by other disease outbreaks. The following are diseases that have hit and become epidemics, summarized by us from various sources.
1. Pes
This disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis which is carried by fleas that live in mice. People are infected with bubonic plague through the bite of a rat tick or the bite of an infected rat. The bubonic plague is divided into 3 types based on the part of the body that is infected. The bubonic plague has been an epidemic for several times, namely:
The Plague of 541 - 542
Known as the Justinian plague. This plague attacked the Byzantine Empire and the port cities of the Mediterranean. The death toll from this disease reached 30-50 million people or about 10% of the population of Constantinople.
The Plague of 1346 - 1353
This plague originally occurred in mainland Europe and is known as the Black Death. This epidemic caused 25 deaths and destroyed three continents at once, namely Asia, Africa, and Europe.
2. Cholera
The Cholera Plague occurred around 1817 - 1823. First originating in Jessore, India, the Cholera epidemic spread from the Ganges river to Asia, Europe, Africa and North America.
A doctor in England named John Snow managed to trace the cause of this outbreak from polluted water and caused by the Vibrio cholerae bacteria that infects the gastrointestinal tract, namely the small intestine.
3. Spanish Flu
This disease is caused by the H1N1 virus which usually attacks birds. In fact, this disease did not originate from Spain, but the news came from there, so that until now it is called the Spanish Flu.
This disease occurred in 1918-1920 during World War I, which exacerbated the pandemic situation. About 500 million people became victims of the Spanish Flu and about a fifth of that total died.
4. Asian Flu
The Asian flu originated from an outbreak of a pandemic influenza A subtype H2N2. Initially, this spread began in China in 1956 - 1958. This outbreak spread from the province of Guizhou, China to Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States. The Asian flu was recorded as causing the deaths of as many as 2 million people.
5. Hong Kong Flu
Infected the first time in Hong Kong in 1968 and lasted until 1970. The cause is influenza A virus type H3N2. The first case of the Hong Kong Flu was reported on July 13, 1968.
It only took three months for this virus to spread and attack residents of Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Australia, Europe, and the United States. The total number of deaths from Hong Kong Flu cases was recorded at 1 million.
6. HIV/AIDS
Caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) causing Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Starting from a chimpanzee virus in West Africa in the 1920s, this disease was first discovered in 1976 in Congo and has been declared a global pandemic since 1981. Until now, this disease is still being found. HIV/AIDS has been recorded to have killed 36 million people worldwide since it was first discovered.
7. Bird Flu
Avian Influenza was first detected in Chinese geese in 1996. Also known as H5N1, this virus was first detected in humans in 1997 during the poultry outbreak in Hong Kong. The virus then spread to 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, to the Middle East. Infects poultry and other wild birds.
At that time, there were six countries that were considered to be endemic for the virus, namely Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Vietnam and Indonesia. WHO noted, the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected 861 people worldwide and caused the death of 455 people until 2019.
8. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)
Occurred between 2002 - 2003. SARS is caused by CoronaVirus. This outbreak originated in Guangdong Province, China and became a pandemic because in a very short time it spread to 26 countries around the world.
9. Swine Flu
Swine Flu is caused by a new type of H1N1 virus that originated in Mexico in 2009, before eventually spreading throughout the world. The total number of infections caused by this disease is 1.4 billion people and the death rate can reach 500,000 thousand people. There are an estimated 60.8 million cases of swine flu in the world with 151,000 to 574,000 deaths. Swine Flu occurred around 2009 - 2010.
10. MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus)
The MERS-CoV virus triggered outbreaks in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and South Korea in 2015. The MERS virus belongs to the same virus family as SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, but this zoonotic disease originated in camels.
11. Ebola
Ebola is transmitted from wild animals (fruit bats, hedgehogs, and non-human primates) to humans, then spreads by human-to-human transmission through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other body fluids of an infected person, and on surfaces and materials. materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) that are contaminated with these infected fluids.
Ebola first appeared in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976. The first cases were discovered in 2014 when the Ebola virus infected residents of a small village in Guinea in 2014 and spread to several neighboring West African countries, including Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Around 2013 - 2016 the Ebola virus caused 11,325 deaths out of 28,600 infected people.