| Abstract | Medical and biological advances in the last half-century have significantly reduced the burden of infectious diseases in the public healthcare system and improved the health and life quality of the world population. Despite this impressive success, traditional infectious diseases together with emerging and re-emerging infections remain a major public health threat globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Based on the World Health Organization Dashboard, COVID-19 causes 633.3 million cumulative cases and 6.59 million deaths worldwide as of November 17, 2022. Moreover, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as one of the principal public health problems of the 21st century and threatens the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections. A recent analysis of data from 204 countries and territories estimates that 1.27 million people died directly from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in 2019 and 4.95 million people died from illnesses in which bacterial AMR played a role. The global AMR crisis is further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased antibiotic use and delayed AMR action. In the USA, overall AMR cases rose by 15% in the first year of the pandemic. Climate change and human mobility also increase the rate of emerging and re-emerging infections as evidenced in Lyme diseases, Zika, and West Nile virus in recent years. Microbial organisms have also been increasingly identified to be associated with or predispose to the pathogenesis of many chronic diseases including cancers as well as the health and well-being of humans. Finally, about three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases affecting humans are zoonotic, advance in the knowledge of microbial pathogenesis will also be important to zoonotic diseases and One Health for food security and environmental sustainability. Thus, how to efficiently combat infectious agents and promote beneficial microbes is now more important than ever. |
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