Complacency Destroys Safety

One of the easiest ways to allow a current or previous issue to become an increasing threat is complacency. Issues like Tuberculosis and Malaria are not hardly discussed in America, because they are not a common issue. However, there are other developing countries that still struggle with these issues as much as, or more than, America has at times. AIDS has surpassed even Malaria as the largest killer in Africa, and Tuberculosis is the most common infectious agent worldwide - Asia being the most affected. With complacency we have allowed diseases like Tuberculosis to resurface within the states, something we thought we had eradicated. We then shifted all of our resources to other areas of research, some outside of the medical field. At the same time developing countries are still fighting these diseases, due to a lack of education, funding, and poor living conditions in some cases.
     America can not take for granted what we have accomplished due to our resources, we can not forget where we were at one point with issues such as AIDS and tuberculosis. If we do so, we will begin to focus on the wrong issues, or focus too much attention on specific areas, and we will have "eradicated" diseases sneaking back into our population. I'm glad that OSHA was incorporated into the CDC in the early 1970's, to assist in monitoring and controlling diseases and other health issues. This is an issue that not only needs to be observed and attended to by the local organizations, but also needs a "big brother" authority to oversee these health issues. America has too large of a battle with diseases we have created and accelerated ourselves, such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, most cancers, etc. We have our hands full with these issues alone, we cannot afford to be complacent and ignore others, or we may find ourselves in the middle of another epidemic that could have been avoided.