2016 isn't getting started off very well for public health, between Flint and Sebring's lead crisis and the spreading Zika virus.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/healt ... .html?_r=0
The virus is carried by mosquitos in the Aedes genus, which also transmit other tropical diseases like dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and others. This particular virus seems to have exploded in parts of South America, and it has been implicated as the cause of a (formally) rare birth defect, microcephaly, in which infants have small heads and brains, and as a result, their neurological development is stunted and results in learning and behavioral disabilities for life. It's gotten so bad that some South American countries are advising women to not get pregnant, and other countries are issuing travel advisories for women of child-bearing age. The virus seems to be asymptomatic in adults, but there have been cases in which infected adults undergo syndrome in which the immune system starts attacking the nervous system and causes paralysis and/or death. I really do wonder what's going on there.
And now the World Health Organization is warning that this virus could very easily spread throughout the Americas and indeed the world, as the Aedes genus of mosquitos is worldwide and global travel could easily take it everywhere, where mosquitos could bite an infected individual and carry it to other people.