With new infection hot zones developing in Europe, world leaders need to get ahead of potential epidemics. My map videos for each of three geographically different Leishmaniasis patterns in the US, are [American] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpxw97tM75k ;
[Ethopian Leishmaniasis] http://youtu.be/jhw8nfEfNOw ; [Asian] http://youtu.be/mkHYn-r-5WQ .
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.washingtonpost.com
Taking a close look at the history of diseases, they appear to recur in different countries as if a "new wave" of outbreaks was developing. This new event leaders are trying to link to global warming and climate change, which could be very well correct, at least partially.
Global warming isn’t the same reasons outbreaks of various international diseases occurred in the past. The past events may have even planted some of the pathogens into our local ecology, long before the first outbreaks even happened.
Other factors that come into play with new foreign disease outbreaks in this country pertain to the migration diseases underwent centuries ago. The common factor for most outbreaks brought from afar is travel, and the amount of people travelling. During the mid-14th century, Taenia (African tapeworm) made its way to Europe by way of merchant and explorer ships.
During the mid-19th century, there is plenty of evidence suggesting the classical Vibrio cholerae was planted ecologically within the Mississippi River deltaic setting. On and off it produced a few outbreaks in Mexico and the U.S., which were never considered an indicator suggesting the pathogen was part of the local ecology.
In the past five decades, travel has been the means by which disease causing organisms provided the opportunity to commute to a new ecosystem. But, whereas fifty years ago in the 1960s, a plane from New York to the Caribbean was a unique transportation event, today, it is nearly a commuter’s route to some, a recurring ‘frequent flier’ event for others.
As of this decade, travelers can easily take just a few hours to spread a disease anywhere they want around the world, from western Australia to Chicago in less than one business day. The migration of a number of foreign borne diseases into the U.S. in 2014 and 2015 proved this inevitability was finally upon us.
Recently, several foreign born pathologies or diagnoses were brought to my attention, due to their "discovery’ in the lower New England-Mid-Atlantic setting. I remind people to check one or more of my postings, if you want to see the past behaviors of diseases on United States turf, over the past ten years. Most of these maps are now being reconfirmed, using different data from different sources. However, if things do get worse, they represent just this moment in US epidemiologic history.
For a number of examples of map videos I produced on what I termed "Foreign Intruder diseases", go to:
My blog page with a listing of these (no video links), is at
https://brianaltonenmph.com/gis/global-health-mapping/foreign-disease-intrusion/
For those who don’t want to search . . . see . . .
Ethopian Leishmaniasis – http://youtu.be/jhw8nfEfNOw
Asian Leishmaniasis – http://youtu.be/mkHYn-r-5WQ
See on Scoop.it – Medical GIS Guide
Brian Altonen, MPH, MS 