Tropical medicine (also sometimes called International medicine) is the branch of medicine that deals with health problems that occur uniquely, are more widespread, or prove more difficult to control in tropical and subtropical regions.
Many infections and infestations that are classified as "tropical diseases" used to be endemic in countries located in temperate or even cold areas. This includes widespread epidemics such as malaria and hookworm infections as well as exceedingly rare diseases like lagochilascaris minor. Many of these diseases have been controlled or even eliminated from developed countries, as a result of improvements in housing, diet, sanitation, and personal hygiene. Since climate is not the main reason why those infections remain endemic in tropical areas, there is a trend towards renaming this speciality as "Geographic Medicine" or "Third World Medicine."
Read more about Tropical Medicine: Training, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words tropical and/or medicine:
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes
When a vessel is, so to speak, “snarked.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“In view of the fact that the number of people living too long has risen catastrophically and still continues to rise.... Question: Must we live as long as modern medicine enables us to?... We control our entry into life, it is time we began to control our exit.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)