Health specialists have sounded the alarm over rising rates of cancer, declaring the disease to be a looming global epidemic.

"The world community (should) focus its attention not only on infectious diseases but to address what is going to be the biggest epidemic we have seen of our time--the coming epidemic of cancer and other noncommunicable diseases," said Derek Yach, project manager of the World Health Organization's Tobacco Free Initiative. Yach spoke at the launch of the World Summit Against Cancer.

"This year, cancer will affect 10 more million people, and five or six million people will die from it," said David Khayat, a co-organizer of the event. "For several years, cancer has not had the attention it deserves, given the amount of suffering, despair, fear and worry it causes."

According to the WHO, there will be 20 million new cancer patients each year by 2020. Among poorer countries, China is expected to bear the brunt of cancer's advance. The country is the world's biggest producer and consumer of cigarettes, with an annual output of more than 1.8 trillion.

An estimated 800,000 people died because of smoking last year, and the toll will top the one-million mark next year.

A potentially deadly strain of salmonella may have been released into the food chain by the poultry industry--and overuse of antibiotics means that for the moment there is no way of stopping it.

Salmonella enteritidis, once only found in rats and mice, has reached epidemic proportions among humans. Scientists believe the bug has spread by rodents infecting factory-farmed chickens. It then reaches humans through chicken meat and eggs.

Detecting enteritidis in broiler chickens is difficult, in eggs impossible. Although it makes itself miserably apparent in humans once diagnosed, it is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Intensive farming methods have enabled the infection to flourish.

A vaccination program which began in the UK in 1994 seems to have had little effect in controlling the epidemic. In 1981, enteritidis made 1,482 people in the UK violently ill. By the late Nineties, that figure had risen to nearly 40,000.

Until now health officials have been mystified by the sudden explosion in numbers. But scientists have now published research showing the phenomenon is directly related to the eradication of other diseases in chickens.

Using antibiotics on sick birds so harmed the immunity of Britain's chickens that the door was opened for the virulent enteritidis to gain a stranglehold. The cramming together of large flocks of birds under intensive farming methods allowed it to spread.

Professor Billy Hargis said the researchers' findings had "astonished and scared" the team. "We were shocked by the notion that in eradicating two diseases [prevalent in chickens] we had in effect allowed a far stronger and more dangerous salmonella to emerge. The consequences are frightening."

Salmonella causes approximately three-quarters of all food poisoning cases. The salmonella pathogen results in diarrhea, vomiting and fever which can last for four to seven days. It can lead to hospitalization and death, and doctors are becoming increasingly worried about the estimated 34 percent of infections that they are finding to be resistant to antibiotics.

Like most Peace Corps volunteers, Martin Giannini embarked on his mission full of high hopes and enthusiasm. His assignment in Togo promised to be the adventure of a lifetime. It certainly was--but not the kind he expected. Giannini's African adventure ended in a padded room in a Chicago psych ward. "I was totally loony," admits Giannini. "I tried to escape but couldn't get past the four guards." What led Giannini, a healthy young man with no history of illness, to take on a battalion of guards in a psychiatric hospital? An antimalaria drug the Peace Corps recommended.

Mefloquine, known commonly under the brand name Lariam, is the most prescribed malaria drug in the world. It's clearly the most effective. And controversial.

Like Giannini, a increasing number of Lariam users have reported hallucinations, paranoia, depression, nightmares and other psychotic effects after taking the drug. It has been implicated in suicide attempts. In the last two years alone, the alleged side effects have led to British and U.S. law suits against Lariam's manufacturer (unresolved), a storm of media coverage (ongoing) and a Canadian government investigation into the military's use of Lariam in Somalia (pending). Tap into the global travelers' wire, and the word is clear: Take this drug at your peril.

Just ten years ago, Lariam was greeted by doctors as a chemical miracle. Strains of malaria in Africa and Asia had developed resistance to chloroquine--the drug of choice since World War 2. The result was skyrocketing rates of infection. By the late 1980's, the Peace Corps considered abandoning its African operations altogether because half its volunteers were contracting malaria. Then came Lariam. Infection rates dropped overnight.

How did Lariam go from wonder drug to dreaded drug in a few years? There's little doubt that Lariam may cause side effects. The manufacturer, Hoffman-La Roche, warns against a litany of possible reactions, from hypertension to hallucinations. What no one can agree on is the risk. For severe psychotic reactions like Giannini experienced, previous studies indicate the rate is one in 10,000. But a recent British survey pinned the figure at an alarming one in 140. That and a growing pile of travelers-gone-loco stories have convinced many people to question Lariam's safety.

A leader of malaria surveillance for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Hans Lobel says simply, "Mefloquine is a remarkable drug. Would you rather get malaria?" Worldwide, malaria infects up to 500 million people annually--and kills nearly 3 million.

But to Lariam sufferers, the risk isn't worth it. "It's like I lost a year of my life," says a slowly recovering Giannini. "I'd rather take my chances with malaria."

Half of all babies in Africa are born infected with HIV--the virus that develops into AIDS--the United Nations reports.

Dr. Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, opened the 11th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases by saying that HIV and AIDS have cut life expectancy in some African communities by 25 years.

TSepo Sitali, a young African girl whose given name means "hope," delivered a speech on how AIDS affects children. She recounted how a friend recently marked her eighth birthday, but neither of her parents could be there because they had died of AIDS.

About 80 percent of all AIDS-related deaths worldwide have occurred in Africa. The 21 countries with the highest incidence of HIV infection are all in Africa, and in 10 of those countries, at least 10 percent of the population is infected.

A disease that once cut a swath through Europe's brightest and best is again laying waste to Russia. Tuberculosis, virtually eliminated a generation ago, has now infected at least half a million people, and threatens to spread from villages, prisons and ramshackle hospitals to the rest of the country.

What is terrifying Western health officials is that a new form of the disease, resistant to modern drugs, is increasingly taking hold in Russia. Inadequate and primitive attempts to deal with the near-epidemic have merely boosted the prevalence of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, especially in the fetid and overcrowded prisons. Within a decade, medical experts say, Russia could have two million almost incurable TB patients.

The disease, principally incubated among the huge prison population of more than a million, is rapidly being spread by the release of 300,000 prisoners a year. Of these, about 10,000 are carrying MDR TB and each person passes on the disease to at least 20 others, health officials estimate. Sooner or later, Western health officials believe, TB will cross Russia's borders, putting all of Western Europe at risk.

"If TB is not tackled at the international level now, it will become the major epidemic of the 21st century," said Dr. Hans Kluge, regional TB coordinator of Médecins Sans Frontières.

AIDS was unknown two decades ago. Now the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization say that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that leads to AIDS.

The report said that of those 50 million, more than 33 million are living with the disease and that at least 16 million have died. The report "AIDS epidemic update: December 1999," published for World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, also said over 16 million of the total infected have died and this year a record 2.6 million people succumbed and another 5.6 million became infected.

"With an epidemic of this scale, every new infection adds to the ripple effect, impacting families, communities, households and increasingly businesses and economies," Said Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "AIDS has emerged as the single greatest threat to development in many countries of the world."