In recent decades, many germs affecting humans, such as Ebola, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), SARS, West Nile virus, and Zika, have spread or changed to pose a growing danger to the world. To make matters worse, measles and whooping cough, diseases once considered on the verge of elimination, have had a resurgence in part because disinformation about vaccines has made some people reluctant to vaccinate themselves or their children. Year after year antibiotics, medicine's frontline defense against bacterial pathogens, prove less effective as bacterial strains mutate and evolve. At the same time, the number of people in the U.S. with sexually transmitted diseases is rising after many years of declining. There is no doubt that infectious diseases pose a constant risk to public health and well-being.

The Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases provides comprehensive and up-to-date information on this topic, including the latest information about new viral and bacterial threats, the spread of diseases, treatments, preventive measures (including vaccines), and the future outlook for public health.

Entries include:

• chicken pox and shingles
• Ebola
• E. coli
• encephalitis
• foodborne pathogens
• hepatitis
• human papillomavirus (HPV)
• influenza (flu)
• Lyme disease
• malaria
• tuberculosis
• West Nile virus
• Zika