Overview of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Korea

The term and concept of emerging infectious diseases (EID) has been burgeoned out in the early 1990s and EID were expected as the most important public health problems of all of countries and global community as a whole. EID have been confirmed as the most important health and security problems when the global community has been experienced a lot of outbreaks of EID including avian influenza in Hong Kong (1997), Nipah encephalitis in Malaysia and Singapore (1999), and anthrax bioterrorism in U.S.A. (2001), and SARS outbreaks in global community (2003). Pandemic influenza could be a big disaster in global community in the near future in the situation of the occurrence of H5N1 avian influenza and it's human cases in southeastern Asian countries. This paper described the EIDs in terms of two epidemiologic transition theories, and described the important EID in global community since 1970s and reviewed the remarkable emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in Korea since 1990. Seven factors contributing to EID and the convergence model for EID were introduced. In conclusion, the preparedness and response plan of public health authority the role of epidemiologist was suggested. Especially the cooperative activities between epidemiologists and other field or sector's professionals were emphasized to find out the etiology or risk factors of EID and preparedness and response plan.