Over the next several decades, the term syndemic would be used by Singer and other scholars to analyze interrelated factors that contributed to other medical emergencies. As you can see, these two diseases are interrelated in that the presence of one is indirectly helping the success of the other. While the effect of tuberculosis on HIV is less clear, there is evidence that tuberculosis infections cause the HIV virus to replicate faster. Obviously, HIV weakens the immune system and so makes a person more vulnerable to any disease-causing pathogens. While one is caused by a bacteria and the other a virus, having one of these diseases makes a person much more susceptible to the other. A commonly cited example of a syndemic is the interaction between HIV and tuberculosis. In this way, syndemic is used as a larger scale version of the term comorbidity. The simplest example of a syndemic is when two diseases synergize to make each other worse. The word syndemic is a blend of syn-, meaning “together,” and – demic, as in epidemic or pandemic. In response, he suggested the term syndemic to describe this situation. Singer argued that these factors were interconnected and combined together to make the AIDS crisis much worse than it otherwise would have been. Specifically, Singer cited higher rates of infant mortality, malnutrition, diabetes, tuberculosis, and STDs among the urban population. He argued that the AIDS health crisis was more than an epidemic and that many interrelated factors were working together to worsen the intensity and damage of the AIDS crisis.
As early as 1994, Singer put forth the term when examining how the AIDS virus disproportionately impacted poor people living in urban areas. The term syndemic was created by medical anthropologist Merrill Singer in the early 1990s.
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