Tropical Diseases in Travelers

This book captures the essence of tropical medicine for clinicians evaluating returning travelers. The editor, an international expert in tropical and travel medicine, authored or coauthored many chapters of the book. The book also reflects the experience of numerous experts in the field of travel medicine. 
 
The book consists of 43 chapters organized into 3 sections: general aspects of tropical diseases in travelers, specific infections, and approaches to specific syndromes. The first section describes general trends in travel medicine and discusses types of studies encountered in travel medicine research. This section provides a basis for screening travelers and makes recommendations for doing so. 
 
The section on specific diagnoses dedicates a chapter each to the most commonly encountered groups of microbial organisms. This section emphasizes the epidemiology of travel illnesses and clinical signs and symptoms in travelers, especially aspects of illness different from those of populations residing in the disease-endemic areas. This section also includes photographs of physical findings in travelers; the photographs highlight such diseases as African tick-bite fever, chikungunya, dengue, swimmer’s itch, African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, measles, tungiasis, and cutaneous larva migrans. 
 
The section on syndromes focuses on approaches to evaluating major complaints in returning travelers. Complaints discussed include posttravel diarrhea, fever, skin problems, eosinophilia, respiratory complaints, rheumatologic conditions, and neurologic findings. 
 
For clinicians, adequate knowledge of illnesses associated with travel is critical to the ability to provide proper pretravel advice. This book contributes much information to assist in understanding diseases encountered by travelers. It is a valuable reference on tropical and travel medicine and is especially important to clinicians managing ill travelers. However, it also supplies fundamental background information for clinicians providing only pretravel consultations. The authors present concise, solid evidence and practical insights on tropical diseases in travelers. I recommend it highly to clinicians involved in the care of travelers in industrialized and developing countries.

This book captures the essence of tropical medicine for clinicians evaluating returning travelers. The editor, an international expert in tropical and travel medicine, authored or coauthored many chapters of the book. The book also refl ects the experience of numerous experts in the fi eld of travel medicine.
The book consists of 43 chapters organized into 3 sections: general aspects of tropical diseases in travelers, specifi c infections, and approaches to specifi c syndromes. The fi rst section describes general trends in travel medicine and discusses types of studies encountered in travel medicine research. This section provides a basis for screening travelers and makes recommendations for doing so.
The section on specifi c diagnoses dedicates a chapter each to the most commonly encountered groups of microbial organisms. This section emphasizes the epidemiology of travel illnesses and clinical signs and symptoms in travelers, especially aspects of illness different from those of populations residing in the disease-endemic areas. This section also includes photographs of physical fi ndings in travelers; the photographs highlight such diseases as African tick-bite fever, chikungunya, dengue, swimmer's itch, African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, measles, tungiasis, and cutaneous larva migrans.
The section on syndromes focuses on approaches to evaluating major complaints in returning travelers. Complaints discussed include posttravel diarrhea, fever, skin problems, eosinophilia, respiratory complaints, rheumatologic conditions, and neurologic fi ndings.
For clinicians, adequate knowledge of illnesses associated with travel is critical to the ability to provide proper pretravel advice. This book contributes much information to assist in understanding diseases encountered by travelers. It is a valuable reference on tropical and travel medicine and is especially important to clinicians managing ill travelers. However, it also supplies fundamental background information for clinicians providing only pretravel consultations. The authors present concise, solid evidence and practical insights on tropical diseases in travelers. I recommend it highly to clinicians involved in the care of travelers in industrialized and developing countries. Contagion and Chaos describes the threat that emerging and reemerg-ing infectious diseases pose to international security because of these diseases' negative effects on sovereign states. The author proposes the following 5 hypotheses: 1) epidemic disease may compromise the prosperity, legitimacy, structural cohesion, and, in certain cases, security of sovereign states; 2) epidemics and pandemics of emerging or reemerging infectious diseases may promote economic and political discord among countries but are unlikely to generate serious armed confl ict; 3) only some pathogens threaten national security according to criteria such as lethality, transmissibility, fear, and economic damage; 4) warfare (intrastate and interstate) amplifi es problems caused by disease; and 5) the paradigm of health security is philosophically grounded in the political tradition of republican theory.

Lin H. Chen
The author stresses that the association between the health of a population and perception of national security is ancient but largely forgotten. He suggests that a republican revision of systems-level international relations theory provides an optimal framework for examining the paradigm of health security.
The book's 8 chapters discuss data supporting the author's hypotheses. The fi rst chapter describes the relationships among pathogens, society, and the state from a political science perspective. For nonpolitical scientists, this chapter is diffi cult. However, chapters 2-7 are interesting and enlightening. Chapter 2 explores the historical relationship between the state and society in the context of contagion. The author provides a historical perspective for the long-held perception that infectious disease poses a distinct threat to the stability, prosperity, material interests, and, therefore, security of the state. Chapters 3-6 present case studies concerning the infl uenza pandemic of 1918, HIV/AIDS, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and its human variant, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, and severe acute respiratory syn-