Article: Report warns of spread of infectious diseases U.N. group says progress in health care is at stake; Top infectious killers About 17 million people were killed by infectious diseases in 1995, the World Health Organization reports. The biggest killers were: Pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections. 4.4 million. Diarrheal diseases such as cholera, typhoid, dysentery. 3.1 million. Tuberculosis. 3.1 million. Malaria. 2.1 million. Hepatitis B. More than 1.1 million. AIDS. More than 1 million. Measles. More than 1 million children. Neonatal tetanus. 460,000 infants. Whooping cough. 355,000 children. Intestinal worms. At least 135,000 people.

Overuse of medicine, human settlement of uninhabited areas, international travel and poverty have combined to produce a devastating spread of infectious diseases, a new report says.

The report by the World Health Organization warns that the spread of untreatable forms of malaria and tuberculosis and the emergence of killers such as AIDS and Ebola threaten to undermine recent advances in health care.

"We are standing on the brink of a global crisis in infectious diseases," said Hiroshi Nakajima, director general of the organization.

"The optimism of a relatively few years ago that many of these diseases could be brought under control has led to a fatal complacency. This complacency is now ...

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