The European Journal of Public Health
Volume 24 Issue 4 August 2014
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/current

From global to local: vector-borne disease in an interconnected world
Jonathan E. Suk1 and Jan C. Semenza2
Author Affiliations
1 Country Preparedness Support Section, Public Health Capacity and Communication Unit, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, SE-171 83 Stockholm, Sweden
2 Office of the Chief Scientist, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, SE-171 83 Stockholm, Sweden
Extract
World Health Day 2014 focused on vector-borne diseases, offering the opportunity to take stock of the remarkable persistence that diseases transmitted by ticks, mosquitoes and other arthropods have exhibited in recent years. It may be tempting to view vector-borne diseases as less of an issue for Europe than other regions of the world, but this would be a mistake. Over the past decade, continental Europe has been subject to local (autochthonous) transmission of the tropical diseases chikungunya and dengue, a Greek outbreak of malaria, significant outbreaks of West Nile virus and the continued geographic expansion of vectors such as the tick species Ixodes ricinus and the mosquito species Aedes albopictus.1
It is both important and revealing to interrogate the myriad factors driving vector-borne disease, particularly those factors that are not considered to be traditionally within the health sector. The risk of transmission can be seen as a function of interrelated and interdependent drivers that can interact on a global scale but manifest themselves locally…