Word: diphtheria
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...officials fear the disease could erupt into an epidemic. Cholera outbreaks were rare in that part of the world before the breakup of the Soviet Union, but collapsing health services and worsening sanitary conditions have fostered the disease. Shortages of vaccines, meanwhile, have led to an upsurge in diphtheria in Russia, and health experts have encountered cases of typhoid, hepatitis, anthrax and salmonella in neighboring Ukraine...
...1970s, medical researchers were even boasting that humanity's victory against infectious disease was just a matter of time. The polio virus had been tamed by the Salk and Sabin vaccines; the smallpox virus was virtually gone; the parasite that causes malaria was in retreat; once deadly illnesses, including diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus, seemed like quaint reminders of a bygone era, like Model T Fords or silent movies...
...made from a harmless fragment of microbe that trains the body's immune system to recognize and fight the real thing. Each person's immune system is chemically different from everyone else's, so it's very difficult for a bacterium to develop a shield that offers universal protection. Diphtheria and tetanus can be prevented by vaccines if they are used properly. A vaccine against the pneumococcus bacterium has recently come out of the lab as well, and scientists expect to test one that targets streptococcus A within a year...
Over the next century, scientists such as Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich developed more vaccines to diseases such as diphtheria, in the process saving countless millions of lives...
Physicians use vaccines against viruses, such as the measles, polio, mumps, or rubella, against bacteria, such as typhoid and salmonella, and against bacterial toxins, such as pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria. Each type of antigen, however, requires its own strategy...