WHO Urges Greater Push to Stop Diseases

The world is facing a medical crisis with frightening diseases of the past reemerging and new bacteria and viruses eluding modern medicine, the U.N. health agency warned. Microbes are becoming resistant to antibiotic drugs, viruses are mutating and changing hosts, and diseases thought to have been defeated are making a comeback in the age of jet travel, large slums and big population movements, the World Health Organization said. In a message on the eve of today’s World Health Day, WHO Director General Hiroshi Nakajima of Japan urged governments to put more money into the fight against infectious diseases that kill nearly 50,000 people a day.