Supposedly due to increased poverty and malnutrition, diseases that were thought to have been long since been defeated — specifically ‘victorian’ diseases, including tuberculosis, cholera, measles, whooping cough and scurvy — are making a startling comeback in developed nations such as the United States and England.
According to UPI, the last five years have seen a 136 percent increase in the number of people being treated for scarlet fever, a 38 percent increase for scurvy, and a 300 percent increase for cholera.
“There has been a huge rise in scarlet fever — 14,000 [suspected] cases in the last year, the highest since the 1960s,” said London immunologist Dr. Nuria Martinez-Alier in an interview with CNN.
In addition to the previously mentioned diseases, tuberculosis seems to be making a comeback as well. Although overall tuberculosis rates in England have reduced in several years — though the decrease in tuberculosis rates have been slowing down in the United States in that same time period — the number of cases is still surprisingly high.
According to a report by England’s National Health Service, some neighborhoods have higher tuberculosis rates than countries like Iraq, Guatemala, and Rwanda, where cases are though to be far more common.
“We have seen a rise in the cases of tuberculosis, we’ve seen a rise in cases of whooping cough, we have seen more measles in the last 10 years than in the last 10 years before that,” said Martinez-Alier.
The uptick in the spread of these diseases has been blamed on malnutrition as well as in the lack of access to care by those affected.
In 2013, tuberculosis was confirmed to have killed 1.5 million people while infecting around 9 million. Earlier this week, the White House released a plan that illustrated the steps they will take to more effectively combat the disease on a global scale during the next five years.