Tropical disease: Encyclopedia II - Tropical disease - Diseases

Tropical disease - Diseases

The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) of the World Health Organization focuses on neglected infectious diseases that disproportionally affect poor and marginalized populations. The current disease portfolio includes the following ten:

• African trypanosomiasis
• Dengue fever
• Leishmaniasis
• Malaria
• Schistosomiasis
• Tuberculosis
• Chagas disease
• Leprosy
• Lymphatic filariasis
• Onchocerciasis

Although leprosy and tuberculosis are not exclusively tropical diseases (they have occurred everywhere), their highest incidence in the tropics justify its inclusion. Cholera and yellow fever also fall into this category.

Some tropical diseases are very rare, but may occur in sudden epidemics, such as the Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever and the Marburg virus. There are hundreds of different tropical diseases which are less known or rarer, but that, nonetheless, have importance for public health, such as:

• Ouropoche
• Lobomycosis
• West Nile disease
• etc.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Diseases", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki