The miasma theory is an abandoned medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.
William Farr CB was a British epidemiologist, regarded as one of the founders of medical statistics.
John Snow was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology and early germ theory, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in London's Soho, which he identified as a particular public water pump. Snow's findings inspired fundamental changes in the water and waste systems of London, which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) in charge of international health cooperation in the Americas. It fosters technical cooperation among member countries to fight communicable and noncommunicable diseases, strengthen health systems, and respond to emergencies and disasters.
Donald Ainslie Henderson was an American physician, educator, and epidemiologist who directed a 10-year international effort (1967–1977) that eradicated smallpox throughout the world and launched international childhood vaccination programs. From 1977 to 1990, he was Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Later, he played a leading role in instigating national programs for public health preparedness and response following biological attacks and national disasters. At the time of his death, he was Professor and Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Distinguished Scholar at the UPMC Center for Health Security.
Edwin Lankester FRS, FRMS, MRCS was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a Nigerian economist, who has been serving as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization since March 2021. She is the first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization as Director-General.
Abram Salmon Benenson was an authority in public health, preventive medicine, military medicine, and "shoe-leather" epidemiology. He was best known as the editor-in-chief for the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual of the American Public Health Association. His tenure as editor was so lengthy that the manual was often known as the "Benenson Book".
Henry Whitehead was a Church of England priest and the assistant curate of St Luke's Church in Soho, London, during the 1854 cholera outbreak.
The third cholera pandemic (1846–1860) was the third major outbreak of cholera originating in India in the 19th century that reached far beyond its borders, which researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) believe may have started as early as 1837 and lasted until 1863. In the Russian Empire, more than one million people died of cholera. In 1853–1854, the epidemic in London claimed over 10,000 lives, and there were 23,000 deaths for all of Great Britain. This pandemic was considered to have the highest fatalities of the 19th-century epidemics.
The Broad Street cholera outbreak was a severe outbreak of cholera that occurred in 1854 near Broad Street in Soho, London, England, and occurred during the 1846–1860 cholera pandemic happening worldwide. This outbreak, which killed 616 people, is best known for the physician John Snow's study of its causes and his hypothesis that germ-contaminated water was the source of cholera, rather than particles in the air. This discovery came to influence public health and the construction of improved sanitation facilities beginning in the mid-19th century. Later, the term "focus of infection" started to be used to describe sites, such as the Broad Street pump, in which conditions are favourable for transmission of an infection. Snow's endeavour to find the cause of the transmission of cholera caused him to unknowingly create a double-blind experiment.
Muhammad Ali Pate is a Nigerian physician and politician who is the current Minister of Health and Social Welfare of Nigeria since 2023. He's also a professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard University. He formerly served as the Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population and director of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF) at the World Bank Group. Pate is also the former Minister of State for Health in Nigeria.
Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon, specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has held leadership positions and has worked on various outbreak response teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including bacillary dysentery, cholera, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg virus disease, measles, meningitis, relapsing fever, Rift Valley fever, SARS, and Shigellosis.
John N. Nkengasong is a Cameroonian-American virologist serving as the Global AIDS Coordinator in the Biden administration since 2022 and Senior Bureau Official for Global Health Security and Diplomacy since 2023. He previously worked as the Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention from 2016 to 2022, as well as at the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nkengasong was appointed the WHO Special Envoy for Africa.
Nick Ward is a British physician and expert on smallpox. He worked in Botswana before having lead roles during the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication programme in Bangladesh and was the first coordinator of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
The John Snow, formerly the Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is a public house in Broadwick Street, in the Soho district of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London, and dates back to the 1870s. It is named for the British epidemiologist and anaesthetist John Snow, who identified the nearby water pump as the source of a cholera outbreak in 1854.
The John Snow Society (JSS), founded 1992, is a learned society named for the English physician John Snow. It publishes the newsletter Broad Sheet, and hosts the Pumphandle Lecture at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The John Snow pub in Soho, London, serves as its meeting place.
Julie Laraine Cliff is an Australian physician and epidemiologist known for her work in the prevention and control of infectious diseases through investigating epidemics and health policy, particularly in Mozambique, where her career spanned around 40 years. There, her investigations revealed that the re-emergence of the paralytic disease konzo in poor rural communities was caused by high levels of cyanide in insufficiently processed cassava, as a result of changes in food preparation practices due to the economic effects of war and drought.
Nicol Spence Galbraith was a British physician in public health and founding director of the Central Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (CDSC). The results of his efforts were demonstrated in 1978, when he represented the PHLS following the smallpox outbreak in Birmingham. Five years later, he warned the government of contaminated blood products.
The 2024 Gaza Strip polio epidemic is an ongoing outbreak of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) in the Gaza Strip, first discovered on 16 July 2024 and officially declared an epidemic by the Gaza health ministry on 29 July. The Gaza health ministry stated that the epidemic presented a significant risk to Gaza's citizens and to bordering countries, and called the outbreak "a setback to the global polio eradication program". The World Health Organization reported that it was "very likely" that polio cases infected citizens of Gaza and was spreading among its population, although detecting cases would be very challenging due to the virus being asymptomatic in most cases and due to Israeli medical blockades preventing confirmation of cases. The epidemic marked the first occurrence of poliovirus in the Gaza Strip since the virus was completely eradicated from the region 25 years prior.
