BBC guidelines means that they have to squeeze it into every article...

From the BBC:

The world is entering “a new phase” where big outbreaks of deadly diseases like Ebola are a “new normal”, the World Health Organization has warned.

Previous Ebola outbreaks affected relatively small numbers of people. But the Democratic Republic of Congo is dealing with the second largest outbreak ever, just three years after the world’s largest one ended.

The topic of epidemics is fascinating and terrifying in equal measure, go on…

Dr Josie Golding, the epidemics lead at the Wellcome Trust, said the world needed to get better at preparing for such outbreaks.

“With Ebola in West Africa, that was the mobility of people and porous borders – that is now the world we live in, that won’t stop,” she said.

Yup, more movement of people = more spread of diseases, until one day hopefully we’ll all be immune to everything.

And drumroll, please…

Climate change could lead to more outbreaks like cholera in Mozambique after Cyclone Idai, she said. But she hoped diseases resulting from humanitarian crises would not be a new normal.

“Preparedness needs to be better, we can see movement of populations and climate change, a lot of this we can see coming, and we need more resources to plan and prepare.”

Like most ‘natural disasters’, the cyclone/cholera episode was actually a failure in town/infrastructure planning. Cholera outbreaks were common in England until we got our mains water and sewage systems sorted out; Developed countries are regularly hit with typhoons- hurricanes-cyclones and they don’t have cholera outbreaks.