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Foreword |
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Inaugurated in 1994, the Center for Tropical Diseases of the University at
Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has already received national and international
recognition as a center of excellence for research on tropical emerging and reemerging
infectious diseases. The underlying rationale for establishing the Center and the
strategic research philosophy that guides its development can perhaps be best appreciated
in the context of the recent history, current status and predictable future of mankind's
age-old battle with infectious diseases. In the course of this century, we have witnessed
tremendous advances in scientific knowledge regarding the etiology, prevention and control
of infectious diseases, followed by a brief interlude of optimism and complacency, and
the relaxation and interruption of public health surveillance and control programs. The
misconception that the modern, developed world was no longer vulnerable to widespread
infectious diseases was shattered with the emergence of pandemic HIV/AIDS and other new
life-threatening infectious diseases and the vigorous resurgence of infectious diseases
prematurely dismissed as historical artifacts
Today, less than three decades after the U.S. Surgeon General's bold pronouncement in 1967
that "it is time to close the book on infectious diseases," infectious diseases remain the
major cause of sickness and death worldwide. Tropical infectious diseases, those which
disproportionately affect people living in developing countries, account for the vast
amount of morbidity and mortality caused by pathogenic microorganisms. These pathogens
are currently responsible for the suffering and death of a staggering one-half billion
people, or one out of 10 of the world's inhabitants. Although the immediate burden of
tropical infectious diseases falls most heavily on the people of developing countries,
citizens of industrialized countries are increasingly experiencing their effects,
especially as increasing international travel makes them more liable to come into contact
with the causative infectious organisms. Moreover, the emergence and rapid spread of new
infectious diseases, most dramatically pandemic HIV/AIDS, and resurgence of diseases such
as cholera, tuberculosis, rabies, dengue, and yellow fever, some of which reemerged in more
virulent and drug-resistant forms, has impressed upon us the global vulnerability we all
have to infectious diseases. The motivation for establishing the Center for Tropical
Diseases at UTMB was grounded in the sobering realities cited above. Our ultimate mission
is to alleviate suffering from tropical infectious diseases, including infections that threaten
to emerge or reemerge from the tropics and elsewhere as a risk to the population of the
United States, through application of basic, applied and field research. The strategic
research philosophy that has guided the Center's development is to enable the best available
intellectual and physical resources to be integrated and focused on intracellular parasitism
of major global importance. It is only through this avenue that the global impact of tropical
diseases will be reduced or prevented with the successful development and use of new vaccines.
The eradication of smallpox clearly shows that research and education can significantly impact
tropical infectious diseases and reduce human suffering and economic losses. The Center has
attracted an exceptionally talented and multidisciplinary team of intracellular parasitic-oriented
research scientists with expertise in a broad spectrum of tropical emerging and re-merging infectious
disease agents. Research emphasis of Center investigators includes arboviruses, protozoa causing
infections such as leishmaniasis and malaria, tick- and flea-borne rickettsiae and ehrlichiae, the
arthropod vectors of these diseases, fungi of importance in the tropics, and cholera and other diarrheal diseases.
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