What to Know About Travel Related Infections

Abstract

Travel is as old as human history. People travel for purposes such as migration, commerce, education, missionary activity, and entertainment. Historically, these human movements gave rise to geographical discoveries, trade, and economic development. Distances that took months to traverse by horseback can now be traveled in a matter of hours. The world has become a village inhabited by seven billion people, 1.2 billion of whom are tourists. Although the distance between Africa and America is 14,000 km and 20 hours by plane, there were also cases in the United States during the Ebola epidemic in Africa. Infectious agents have reached beyond the geographies where they are considered endemic. This review was written to highlight the change in infectious agents which are not common in Turkey and are imported by tourists, and to provide an overview of travel-related infections. In addition, infections with high mortality and morbidity, such as malaria, dengue, enteric fever, hepatitis, leptospirosis, and gastroenteritis, are described in more detail.

Keywords

• Travel related infection
• tropical disease