Center for Tropical Diseases
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.