Respiratory tract infections as a public health challenge.

Acute respiratory infections have everywhere become the province of clinicians and the pharmaceutical industry. A public health approach is needed with systematic efforts to minimize transmission, maximize prevention, and harness the research and surveillance effort to decrease their incidence and severity. These infections have a huge incidence, morbidity burden, and economic impact in all societies. Several factors now demand renewed attention to prevention. They include the growing costs and potentially limited benefits of an expanded pharmacotherapeutic approach; the serious change in antibiotic susceptibility of the common respiratory pathogens; the advances made in vaccinology in recent years; and the need to promote equity and share limited health resources across the world's population. Care should not be restricted to those in affluent countries who can afford increasingly expensive treatment.