The fastest growing public health menace in the world isn't a disease in the ordinary sense of the term--it's a product. The consumption of tobacco has reached the proportions of a global epidemic. Tobacco companies are cranking out cigarettes at the rate of 5.5 trillion a year--that's nearly 1,000 cigarettes for every man, woman, and child on the planet.

Already, one person out of every five is a smoker. And just as a successful pathogen adapts to changing conditions as it spreads, tobacco is proving adept at exploiting new markets. Within 25 years, tobacco-induced illness is expected to overtake infectious disease as the leading threat to human health worldwide.

A "bird flu" strain of influenza virus has caused only 20 confirmed or suspected cases of human illness in Hong Kong. Yet Hong Kong health officials are so worried about the virus that they slaughtered all 1.2 million chickens in the territory. And virologists around the world have been burning the midnight oil for several weeks, studying the strain and attempting to make a vaccine for it.

Why should so few cases cause such drastic measures locally and apprehension globally?

There is nothing like a new strain of influenza virus to make health officials shiver. They have long warned that a worldwide influenza epidemic like the one that killed 21 million people in 1918 and 1919 could strike again without warning.

Influenza's impact can far exceed the range of the most ferocious hurricane. In about the time it takes a hurricane to sweep through a region, sneezes and coughs can begin spreading the virus through the world. Few other infectious diseases have the potential to kill millions of people of all ages so quickly.

LONDON  -- Medical experts believe cases of hepatitis C have reached epidemic proportions and predict the lingering liver disease will kill more people than AIDS over the next two decades.

"Hepatitis C has emerged from obscurity as a disease familiar to only a few experts to being recognized as a major public health problem worldwide," Dr. Adrian Di Bisceglie said in a report in The Lancet medical journal.

The professor of internal medicine at the University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri,8 and other experts believe deaths from hepatitis C will triple in the next 20 years.

Between one to two percent of the population in most developed countries is infected with the virus but the numbers are much higher in some parts of eastern Europe and Africa.

A flesh-rotting bacteria called buruli that lurks in soil is attacking man as never before, especially in Africa. Death often comes from multiple infections, exhaustion, and blood poisoning. "Now that we are getting rid of leprosy, we have a new leprosy bug for the third millennium," says Ivory Coast's World Health Organisation representative, Dr. Emmanuel Eben-Moussi. Dr. Bouzid Samir Anor, an epidemiologist researching Buruli at Ivory Coast's branch of the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, said: "Now it is in an epidemic phase. In four years, the number of affected people doubled." There is no known cure for buruli, which is similar to tuberculosis.

Health experts from the UN's WHO, meeting in Helsinki, said that new and emerging diseases along with crumbling health systems are posing an increasing threat to human health internationally. Fernado Antezana, WHO deputy director general, said, "We have seen in the past few decades the most significant gains ever achieved in human health, but simultaneously the growth of enormous threats to health, particularly arising from an increase in absolute and relative poverty."

Editor: In examining some of the recent news clips we've received of "pestilences in diverse places" (Matthew 24:7), we've been struck by how many there are and how quickly they're growing. Following is a brief overview of the bugs--both literal and figurative--ravaging the earth:

Tuberculosis

(Reuters)
TB infects a third of the earth's population, killing nearly 3 million people every year, spreading swiftly and freely through the air. Half the people infected don't realize they have the disease, which health authorities talk only of trying to control. Eradication is not even on the horizon. The World Health Organization estimates that more people will die from TB this year than in any other year in history.

Malaria

(BBC)
It is estimated that at any time 2.5 billion people are at risk from malaria. It kills 3 million a year; 500 million are made very ill. Most cases occur in tropical Africa and Southeast Asia. According to recent studies, malaria is more prevalent today than it has been at any other period in history. More than 90 countries have malaria during all or part of the year, and at any given time, up to 300 million people are infected with the disease.

AIDS

(AP)
Every minute worldwide, five people between the ages of 10 and 24 become infected with HIV, according to a new UN report. The UNAIDS report also warned that Eastern Europe is set to become "one of the next epicenters" of the world AIDS crisis, with HIV infection rates having increased at least sixfold since 1994. The young are particularly hard-hit by the world epidemic, with at least one-third of the 30 million HIV carriers being 24 or younger. Each day, 7,000 young people worldwide contract HIV, adding up to 2.6 million new infections annually.

Sleeping sickness

(CNN)
On the African continent, in the narrow band between the 15th parallels that bookend the equator, a tiny fly is jeopardizing the lives of 55 million people and could be responsible for one of the largest epidemics of this century. The bite of the tsetse fly can carry a parasite that will work its way through your body and, if left untreated, put you on course for a slow, agonizing and certain death.

It's called the sleeping sickness. 25,000 new cases of sleeping sickness are diagnosed each year. Dr. Michaleen Richer of the International Medical Corps said the prevalence of sleeping sickness has risen by more than 15 percent. "This is an epidemic of really catastrophic proportions," Michaleen added.

Dengue fever

(Reuters)
Scientists have warned that rising global temperatures could bring more than floods and severe weather--they may allow for the wider spread of tropical illnesses like dengue fever. The World Health Organization estimates that 2.5 billion people are currently at risk from dengue fever. More than 240,000 cases were reported in Brazil in 1997. Dengue fever killed 40 people in Venezuela in 1997, and infected 32,000. A recent outbreak in Fiji killed eight people and infected 6,500.

Pneumonia

(MSNBC)
A new study shows that the bacterium called Streptococcus pneumonia is penicillin-resistant in almost half of cases. A few years ago doctors could always assume that penicillin would kill the pneumonia-causing organism. Now they always have to take into account the possibility that penicillin won't work. "When the bacterium enters the bloodstream, up to 20 percent of the people over age 65 may die of it," says Dr. Jay Cutler of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "And mortality approaches 40 percent among those age 80 and over." But the bacteria do not strike only the elderly. The same germ is responsible for most childhood ear infections--which can spread to the blood and the brain if not stopped.

Bubonic plague

(AP)
For the first time, scientists have found a strain of the plague that is resistant to all the antibiotics normally used to treat and prevent the deadly infectious disease. The plague, the Black Death that killed one-fourth of the European population in the 1300s, is spread by fleas that have bitten infected rats and other rodents or by sneezes and coughs from infected people. Plague is considered a re-emerging disease by the World Health Organization. The number of cases reported each year is growing, cases are cropping up in more places and epidemics happened in 1994 in East Africa, Madagascar, Peru and India.

Rift Valley Fever

(BBC)
An outbreak of the hemorrhagic disease Rift Valley Fever is now estimated to have infected 89,000 people and killed more than 400 in northeastern Kenya and in Somalia. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN has categorized the outbreak as an international disaster because of fears that infected mosquitoes and animals may spread the disease to other countries.