Aids: More than 42 million people have HIV or Aids. The first proven death from Aids came in 1959 in the Belgian Congo.

Bubonic Plague: Worldwide death toll estimated to be about 137 million. In 1665 the plague hit London, killing at least 70,000 of the city's 500,000 inhabitants.

Smallpox: In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, one in six deaths in Britain was from smallpox.

Tuberculosis: During the eighteenth century, TB was behind 20 per cent of all deaths in England and Wales. Now, between two and three million die of TB worldwide every year.

Cholera: This water-borne disease ravaged towns and cities throughout the Industrial Revolution due to poor sanitation in the slums. In the 1830s, an epidemic killed 21,000 in Britain.

Malaria: This parasitic disease can cause anaemia and kills more than one million people annually.

Ebola: This emerged in the 1970s, when outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire killed nearly 500 people. There is no treatment.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: Linked to eating beef from cows infected with BSE, the first deaths were recorded in 1995. The number of deaths in the UK has now reached 125.