Taking a Bite Out of Vector-Transmitted Infectious Diseases

Abstract

It is hard to overstate the medical importance and burden of vector-transmitted infectious diseases. Whether the metric used is mortality (malaria, for example, kills 1 million to 2 million people annually, most of them children under 5 years of age), morbidity (more than 70 million years of healthy living are lost to malaria, Chagas' disease, leishmaniasis, dengue fever, lymphatic filariasis, and the encephalitis viruses), or something as difficult to quantify as anxiety in a population (activities in outdoor playgrounds and high schools, for example, were moved or suspended along the south shore of Massachusetts this past fall because of concern raised by three cases of eastern equine encephalitis), the burden of these infections is enormous.