Meeting

Today, international travel and commerce (most notably the explosive growth of commercial air transportation over the past 50 years) drives the rapid, global distribution of microbial pathogens and the organisms that harbor them. These include humans, whose migrations have been implicated in the introduction and spread of diseases such as SARS, drug-resistant malaria, and chikungunya  (a mosquito-borne viral disease) in Europe. Indeed, it is possible to travel between most places in the world in less time than the incubation period for many infectious diseases. Travel has not only become increasingly rapid and more socially widespread, but also more pervasive in once-remote areas, which serve as both sources and sinks for emerging infectious diseases.

International trade in food and other agricultural commodities, as well as in wildlife, has also increased markedly, and now connects an ever-widening network of producers and markets. Diseases often accompany live animals, plants, and their byproducts, across continents and oceans; microbes and vectors also hitch rides in ballast water (water that is loaded and unloaded to balance cargo weight in ships) and in shipping crates and containers. Upon arrival, potentially disease-containing goods can be redistributed nationwide within hours from transfer terminals and ports. More subtly, but no less importantly, introduced animals, plants, and microbes can disrupt ecosystems in ways that increase the potential for infectious disease outbreaks. Such changes can be difficult to anticipate and even more daunting to prevent.

On December 16^th and 17^th, 2008, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine hosted a two-day public workshop in Washington, DC, on Globalization, Movement of Pathogens (and their hosts) and the revised IHRs. Through invited presentations and subsequent discussions, participants explored a variety of interrelated topics associated with global infectious disease surveillance including: historical approaches to infectious disease identification and containment; natural and human-mediated pathways of pathogen and vector movement; the ecology of invasive species relevant to infectious diseases; public health and economic threats associated with invasive species; national and international policies concerning border biosecurity; and opportunities to prevent and contain biological introductions, and thereby, the burden of emerging infectious diseases.