Regardless of the era, humans have always had to deal with deadly diseases. Here are 10 of the deadliest diseases in human history.
Number 10 - Outbreaks of infectious smallpox persisted for 10,000 years. At that point, hundreds of millions had already lost their lives to it. Today the disease has been eradicated, except for some lab samples stored around the world.
Number 9 - Strokes belong to the category of cerebrovascular disease. In the US alone, over 140,000 sufferers die from strokes annually.
Number 8 -- A 9th century Arab physician is the first known person to document measles. Prior to extensive vaccinations in 1980 the global annual death rate was approximately 2.6 million. By 2011, over 150,000 deaths were reported across the world.
Number 7 - Today, due to mosquitoes transmitting malaria to humans, anywhere from 300 to 500 million cases of it are reported every year. Roughly 1 million die from the disease annually.
Number 6 - The bacterial infection, tuberculosis is still proving to be a killer. In 2012, 1.3 million people were killed by it, while more than 8.5 million cases were reported worldwide.
Number 5 - Aids was first recognized in the 1980s. Caused by the virus HIV, nowadays more than 35 million people live with either HIV or AIDS. Each year, approximately 1.5 million die from it.
Number 4 - The bacterial disease typhus killed 3 million people in Russia alone over the course of only several years in the early 1900s.
Number 3 -- Cancer.... recent research found signs of cancer in a Neandertal rib bone. Today cancer is killing about 7.6 million annually.
Number 2 - The pandemic called The Black Plague or Black Death, struck around the mid 14th century for about 5 years and killed over 20 million Europeans. It has re-surfaced several more times in the centuries following.
Number 1 - In the short span between 1918 and 1919, an estimated 50 and 100 million people died from the spanish flu - that's more than the casualties of World War I.
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