Health and disease disasters

Epidemics

An epidemic is an outbreak of a contractible disease that spreads at a rapid rate through a human population. Defining an epidemic can be difficult, depending on what is "expected". An epidemic may be restricted to one locale (an outbreak), more general (an "epidemic") or even global (pandemic). Because it is based on what is thought normal, a few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an "epidemic," while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.

Factors that have been described by to stimulate the rise of new epidemics include:

• Changes in agricultural practices and land use
  
• Changes in society
  
• Poor population health
  
• Hospitals and medical procedures
  
• Contamination of water supplies and food sources
  
• International travel
  
• Failure of public health programs
  
• International trade

Famine

A famine is a widespread shortage of food. The failure of a harvest or the change in conditions, such as drought, can create a situation whereby large numbers of people live where the carrying capacity of the land has temporarily dropped radically. Famine is often associated with subsistence agriculture, that is, where most farming is aimed at producing enough food energy to survive.

Disasters, whether natural or man-made, have been associated with conditions of famine ever since humankind has been keeping written records. War, in particular, was associated with famine, particularly in those times and places where warfare included attacks on land, by burning or salting fields, or on those who tilled the soil. In recent decades, famine has always a problem of food distribution and/or poverty, as there has been sufficient food to feed the whole population of the world. Lack of market economy has been blamed for both poverty and problems of food distribution.

Supporting farmers in areas of food insecurity, through such measures as free fertilizers and seeds, increases food harvest and reduces food prices. For example, in Malawi, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid. Then, however, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates.