Don't freak out at this map on infectious diseases in the world. It's good stuff to know.
We've figured out a lot of things over the years, like how to use hashtags and why we should recycle. And way more seriously, how to fight off some of the world's most horrible diseases. For all the progress we've made on that last one, these maps clearly show that we have more work to do.
The deadliest infectious disease in every country*:
Let's zoom in on all those colors real quick, mmkay?
Here's Europe:
Africa:
Central America & the Caribbean:
South America:
Asia:
Middle East & Central Asia:
*A note from GlobalPost on how these maps are set up: The numbers in black boxes show how many thousands of people died from the dominant infectious disease in that country in 2012. Keep in mind that these are absolute numbers, so they're not scaled to account for a country's population. (You can find population numbers here.) They also don't convey the total number of deaths from all infectious diseases in each country, just the number of deaths from the deadliest disease. You'll also notice that many countries in the maps are grayed out (like the USA). That indicates the deadliest infectious disease wasn't among the ones monitored by the WHO.
Those maps are pretty hard to look at, but the state of deadly diseases isn't entirely bad.
Take the evilness known as malaria, for example. We're on our way to getting rid of it for good! Check this out: