Any rare excesses were worked off the following day by intensive jogging or some cycling. Colleagues and students are all very grateful that they got the opportunity to know Peter and to collaborate with him. His name will remain engraved in the memory of many. “
“The zoonotic parasites circulating in Southeast (SE) Asia are
a significant burden on human health and wellbeing and there are multiple transmission pathways that place people at risk. Here we discuss the food-borne pig associated helminths Taenia solium and Trichinella spp.; the small food-borne SAR405838 order trematodes Opisthorchis viverrini and Clonorchis sinensis; the water-borne trematodes belonging to the genus Schistosoma; the vector-borne protozoa Plasmodium knowlesi and Leishmania spp. and the soil-borne zoonotic hookworm Ancylostoma ceylanicum. All but P. knowlesi and trichinellosis have recently been designated neglected Birinapant concentration tropical diseases (NTDs) by the World Health Organisation ( WHO, 2010). Worldwide, NTDs predominantly affect the poor with more than 40 million people infected and 750 million at risk ( Keiser and Utzinger, 2005 and Hotez et al., 2008), furthermore zoonotic neglected diseases make a significant
contribution to the entrenchment of poverty in poor rural communities who derive income from livestock production ( WHO, 2010). Vector-borne protozoan pathogens cause relatively few public health problems in SE Asia in comparison to Latin America and Africa, however, the recent discovery of a simian malaria parasite,
P. knowlesi, infecting humans has reawakened interest, as this may have been an undetected cause of disease for many years in people who derive their living from the forest. Southeast Asia is currently under going changes with respect to climate change, environmental others degradation, deforestation and river basin management, socio-economic development and the industrialisation of livestock production. These complex ecological changes have the potential to modify the interactions between hosts, vectors and parasites and these altered interactions impact on the distribution, prevalence and severity of disease. In this review we provide an update of new knowledge in the context of ecological changes in SE Asia, and we briefly discuss the implications for the design and implementation of control programs or research initiatives. The traditional practice of consuming uncooked or partially cooked meat in some SE Asian nations places many people at risk of acquiring food-borne parasitic zoonoses, particularly T. solium and members of the genus Trichinella. Many of the changes currently taking place in SE Asia have the potential to directly impact on the transmission of these medically important parasites to pigs and by extension to people. The T. solium taeniasis and cysticercosis infection complex involves two distinct disease transmission processes and requires both humans and pigs to maintain the lifecycle.