Medical Geography of Tropical Infections: Disease Patterns in a Changing Environment

Dear Colleagues,

The recent emergence of pandemic influenza viruses, Ebola and vector-borne diseases such as Zika, dengue, Chikungunya and Yellow Fever have highlighted two pressing needs: The first is to anticipate the occurrence of these public health emergencies through the identification of geographical areas and temporal windows of increased risk. The other relates to a better understanding of transmission drivers and biological mechanisms that lead to tropical disease emergence. While these are intrinsically linked, spatial epidemiological techniques are particularly valuable to generate much needed evidence to address these infectious disease challenges.

This is because both early warning and mechanistic causal models require data on a number of factors that determine the geospatial variation of risk; most of these factors are underpinned by our ever-changing environments. Population distributions of human and animal hosts influences how diseases are transmitted by limiting the force of infection. Geographical variation in the coverage and quality of application of control measures is also a contributing factor for diseases operating at gradients of control efficacy. Properties of the physical and socioeconomic environment drive processes of exposure and provide the substrate for diseases to proliferate and be maintained in ecological clusters during successive seasons.

Ultimately, effective control of tropical infections requires knowledge of the populations at risk and geographical variation in infection risk. To achieve that, medical geographical methods have been developed and applied to identify populations that need targeted interventions through integrating dissimilar information summarised into harmonised epidemiological models of disease distribution. This Special Issue will bring together studies that provide novel and comprehensive evaluations of the role of environmental change on the geographical variation of infection risk and associated morbidity. Studies investigating the nexus between children’s health, animal health, environmental change, and demographic change are particularly welcome.

Assoc. Prof. Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães
Dr. Colleen Lau
Dr. Nicholas J. Clark
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Spatial epidemiology
• Zoonoses
• Emerging infectious diseases
• Environmenal health
• Weather variation
• Remote sensing
• Risk mapping