Historical archive · no live data
2026CE
Loading observations…
Shade scale
PlagueDengueCholeraMeaslesParalytic polioTuberculosisDiphtheriaWhooping coughTetanusYellow feverRubellaMumpsCOVID-19
FewerMore
No data ≠ zero
Recorded years
No data ≠ zero
Diseases Map is an interactive disease history map that shows where thirteen infectious diseases were recorded, year by year, on one world map. Move the timeline to watch plague spread through European towns after 1347, dengue appear in the Americas and Asia from the 1920s, and measles, polio and cholera rise and fall in the reports that countries sent to the World Health Organization.
Each layer keeps its own kind of evidence. Plague points are historical mentions of an outbreak in a named town, compiled from chronicles and parish records, so the map counts places rather than patients. Measles, cholera, polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, yellow fever, rubella and mumps are cases that national health systems reported to WHO. Dengue comes from OpenDengue, an open collection of national case counts, and COVID-19 from the WHO dashboard.
Choose one disease in the panel to see its full history on the map, or keep all diseases to compare them in the same year. Switch the timeline to fine navigation to step through ten years month by month, with monthly data for measles since 2012, COVID-19 since 2020 and dengue wherever countries published it. Click a country to read its values and open the original source.
A blank country means that no report exists in the data for that year, not that the disease was absent. A reported zero is shown in pale grey, and the colour scale stays fixed so that years can be compared directly. The stories below explain how the map changed for each disease, including diseases such as malaria and smallpox that disappeared from large parts of the world.
6,846 recorded plague outbreaks in Europe on a map, from the Black Death in 1347 to 1900: the worst years, the busiest places and why it retreated.
Reported measles cases by country, 1974–2024, plus monthly WHO data to 2026: the fall from 5.6 million cases, the 2019 rebound and new outbreaks.
Paralytic polio by country since 1980: from 52,630 cases in 112 countries to 42 in 2016, and why vaccine-derived outbreaks keep polio on the map.
Reported cholera cases by country, 1949–2024: the seventh pandemic from 1961, Latin America in 1991, Haiti in 2010 and Yemen’s record outbreak.
Reported COVID-19 cases by country and year from WHO data, 2020–2026: 444 million cases reported in 2022, and why reports then fell by more than 99%.
Malaria was once common from the English fens to Sicily and the Caucasus. How Europe reached zero local cases in 2015, and why the risk has not gone.
How smallpox was erased from the world map, from the 1967 intensified campaign to the last natural case in Somalia in 1977 and eradication in 1980.
Dengue went from severe epidemics in 9 countries before 1970 to over 100 endemic countries and a record 14 million cases in 2024. How it spread.