Cattle are infected by a community of endemic pathogens with different epidemiological properties that invoke different managerial and governmental responses. We present characteristics of pathogens that influence their ability to persist in the UK, and describe a qualitative framework of factors that influence the political response to a livestock disease. We develop simple transmission models...

We formulate an in silico model of pathogen avoidance mechanism and investigate its impact on defensive behavioural measures (e.g., spontaneous social exclusions and distancing, crowd avoidance and voluntary vaccination adaptation). In particular, we use SIR(B)S (e.g., susceptible-infected-recovered with additional behavioural component) model to investigate the impact of homo-psychologicus asp...

There is evidence indicating that ingestion of arsenic may predispose the development of diabetes mellitus in arsenic-endemic areas in Taiwan. However, the prevalence of diabetes and related vascular diseases in the entire southwestern arseniasis-endemic and nonendemic areas remains to be elucidated. We used the National Health Insurance Database for 1999-2000 to derive the prevalence of non-in...

It is well known that behavioral changes in contact patterns may significantly affect the spread of an epidemic outbreak. Here we focus on simple endemic models for recurrent epidemics, by modelling the social contact rate as a function of the available information on the present and the past disease prevalence. We show that social behavior change alone may trigger sustained oscillations. This ...

As part of its 100th-anniversary celebration, the Pan American Health Organization has named 12 persons as "Public Health Heroes of the Americas" in recognition of their noteworthy contributions to public health in the Region of the Americas. Over the course of this year, the Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health will be carrying pieces written by or about ...

TO THE EDITOR—We read with interest the review authored by Lortholary et al [1] that highlights the importance of endemic fungal infections as potential travel-related diseases. However, in the Asia-Pacific region, the high-risk area of endemic mycoses is elusive [2]. China, the fourth-largest country in the world, has become one of the world's most popular tourist markets. We wish to draw atte...

1 Department of Infectious and Parasitic Disease, Faculdade de Medicina, University of Sao Paulo (USP), São Paulo, SP, Brazil 2 Laboratorio de Imunologia, Avenida Enéias de Carvalho Aguiar, 500 Térreo, Sala 4, 05403-000 Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil 3 HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (HTM), Innovative and Intensified Disease Management (IDM), World Health Organization, Ge...

The poorest billion people are distributed throughout the world, though most are concentrated in rural sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) data can be sparse in low- and middle-income countries beyond urban centers. Despite this urban bias, CVD registries from the poorest countries have long revealed a predominance of nonatherosclerotic stroke, hypertensive heart dis...