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Paralleling the
demographic transition is the epidemiologic transition, which traces the
long-term mortality decline in terms of changes in the major killer diseases.
Only in Stage 4 has modern clinical medicine made a significant difference
to our life chances. Most of our gains spring from industrialization, and
also from public health measures that include mass vaccination, insecticide
spraying, and water purification. Stage 4 also shows us that while we may
have curbed communicable disease, we are far from eradicating it, as
emergent infections like HIV, Ebola and SARS, and re-emergent infections
like tuberculosis, continually remind us.
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