Korean Expat Community for National Disasters

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everyone! Whenever and whereever you’re joining our podcast, like always, welcome and happy New Year everyone. I know it’s a bit late, but you know, this is our first episode after the holidays so I hope everyone’s had happy and safe holidays. Today’s podcast is going to be a bit different, instead of talking about one infectious disease like we usually do, we are going to take a step back and look at the overall history of infectious disease trends in Korea between the 80s and the 2010s. Now, in this episode: We will discuss: -The most common infectious diseases throughout the past most recent decades -The causes of these diseases and their widespread, and the measures that had been taken to eliminate and prevent them -The prevalence of these diseases in today’s Korea -And the best ways to protect yourself and your family In general, developed countries do not suffer from high rates of infectious diseases thanks to the availability of various public health measures, such as improved hygiene, vaccination, and antimicrobial therapy. Nonetheless, infectious diseases are still responsible for the death of a large number of people around the world. And countries and populations of lower socioeconomic status have been the most heavily hit by the implications of such infectious diseases. So, Korea’s overall mortality rate has decreased significantly in the past decades, and the life expectancy has increased in turn, from 67 years in 1983 to 81 years in 2012. Now, these improvements have been associated with the country’s impressive economic growth over the past few decades, and the subsequent improvement of healthcare systems. Despite all of this, infectious diseases still constitute substantial healthcare burdens even in undustrialized countries such as South Korea. It seems that deaths by infectious diseaases have decreased in the years following 1983 and then increased again in 2015. In the early 1980s, the leading cause of infectious disease death was TB, however, in 2015 the most common causes of death from infectious diseases were respiratory tract infections. Now, the reasons behind the widespread of infectious diseases …etc.