Hantaviruses that cause HPS are carried by rodents, especially the deer mouse. You can become infected by exposure to their droppings, and the first signs of sickness (especially fever and muscle aches) appear 1 to 5 weeks later, followed by shortness of breath and coughing. Once this phase begins, the disease progresses rapidly, necessitating hospitalization and often ventilation within 24 hours

Ebola hemorrhagic fever (Ebola HF) is a severe, often-fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys and chimpanzees) that has appeared sporadically since its initial recognition in 1976.

Of all the diseases suffered by humans, it's the only one to be completely eradicated from the face of the Earth. This success was made possible in large part because smallpox is a uniquely human disease that has no known animal or insects carriers.

Mad Cow Disease is the commonly used name for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a slowly progressive, degenerative, fatal disease affecting the central nervous system of adult cattle. Since 1990, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has conducted aggressive surveillance of the highest risk cattle going to slaughter in the United States.

An ancient bacterial disease, tuberculosis has been found in the skulls and spinal cords of Egyptian mummies some 3,000 years old. Today it infects one new person every second and is the world's leading killer of women.

It kills more people in the United States than any other infectious disease, and it is one of the leading causes of death in children under 5 worldwide.

This disease, once believed to be caused by mala aria, or "bad air," is actually spread by the female Anopheles mosquito, a dangerous parasite-carrying agent.

Each year the common flu takes the lives of between 250,000 and 500,000 people worldwide. The virus mutates so rapidly that health officials must create new vaccines year after year to prevent a global epidemic. But, a vaccine against avian influenza presents special challenges.