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Pathological Flyers

 

 



# 5050

 

 

Each year, more than 17 million commercial airline flights transport hundreds of millions of people across the globe.

 

In 2007, London's Heathrow Airport saw 68 million passengers pass through their gates, and they were only the third busiest airport in the world.  The ten most active airports worldwide handled well over a half billion passengers last year.

 

You can literally travel from just about any two cities (with airports) anywhere in the world in 24 hours or less. No longer are the oceans, or distance, a protection against diseases normally seen only in remote areas of the world.

 

They are only a short airplane ride away.

 

 

The video above, which as been making the rounds for several years, was made by ZHAW (Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften) or The Zurich University of Applied Sciences. It is a simulation (using real data) showing 24 hours of air traffic around the world. 

 

A few recent examples of internationally imported infectious diseases include:

 

  • The 2009 influenza pandemic spread rapidly, in large part, due to the heavy spring break air travel in and out of Mexico during the initial outbreak.

  • Earlier this summer Broward County, Florida and this week, Miami reported their first cases of locally acquired dengue fever in more than half a century – no doubt imported by someone who had visited a country where that virus is endemic.

  • The Florida keys has seen more than 50 dengue cases this year, and once again, the introduction of the virus undoubtedly came from a tourist or a resident returning from overseas.

  • In 2007, a small region of northern Italy saw – of all things – an outbreak of Chikungunya – after a resident returned from a visit to India with the virus, eventually spreading to 290 people.

  • The recent outbreak of Cholera in Haiti turns out to be an Asian strain, strongly suggesting that it was imported by a traveler from that part of the globe.

  • Earlier this year the CDC  also issued a Health Advisory via their HAN (Health Alert Network) primarily to inform health care providers of the possibility of seeing Dengue Fever in returning visitors from areas where the virus is being seen. (see Puerto Rico: Dengue Surveillance Update)

  • And similarly, earlier this summer (see A Message Of Import), Australia issued warnings to vacationers returning from Bali who may have been exposed to a `range of infectious diseases, including mosquito borne diseases like Dengue fever, gastroenteritis, sexually transmissible infections, and rabies.’

 

 

Well . . . you get the idea.  

 

Public health officials increasingly have their hands full trying to track and contain diseases that are showing up in places where they’ve never been seen before – primarily because of our highly mobile society.

 

Maryn McKenna addressed some of these issues last week in Traveling? Get your shots, take your pills, which is well worth taking the time to read.  

 

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

 

All of which serves as prelude to a study that appears in the October 30th edition of Pharmacotherapy, and has been reprinted for all to read in Medscape Today.

 

 

Mosquito-borne illnesses in travelers: a review of risk and prevention.

Mirzaian E, Durham MJ, Hess K, Goad JA.

Pharmacotherapy. 2010 Oct;30(10):1031-43.

Abstract

In 2008, residents of the United States made 12 million visits to developing countries in Asia, South America, Central America, Oceania, the Middle East, and Africa. Due to the presence of Anopheles, Aedes, and Culex mosquitoes, travel to these destinations poses a risk for diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and Japanese encephalitis that cause significant morbidity and mortality.

(Continue . . .)

 

For an excellent short-course in mosquito borne diseases, and what we can help do to prevent them, follow these links for the full study.

 

Related Post:

Dengue
Mosquito

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