8 - Global Health and Infectious Intestinal Disease

Summary

Chapter eight, “Infectious Intestinal Disease and Global Public Health,” explores the major challenges to and advances in the control of infectious intestinal diseases since 1970s, when new sets of actors took up the crusade against diarrheal diseases. Physicians and activists organized in response to a spike in infant deaths in the Global South linked to bottle-feeding. Nongovernmental agencies and national politicians encouraged behavioral change to end open defecation. Biomedical scientists developed additional vaccines against poliovirus and rotavirus. Epidemiologists threw new light on the global prevalence of diarrheal diseases and regional disparities in childhood survival rates. The new focus on biomedical interventions and programs of community- or national-level behavioral change constituted a new era in the control of infectious intestinal disease.