[Notable imported infectious diseases].

Abstract

Japanese doctors are somewhat unfamiliar with imported infectious diseases, however, the following imported infectious diseases are notable: cholera, which is currently endemic in Haiti and which there is a possibility of it being imported to Japan from endemic areas; typhoid fever and paratyphoid fever, whose causative organisms showing low sensitivity to fluoroquinolones have become predominant; rabies, which exhibits a high mortality; avian influenza H5N1, which has the possibility of changing into a new type of human influenza; chikungunya fever, in which the number of Japanese patients is increasing; and cyclosporiasis, which led to a number of food poisonings in the USA and Canada, and as a growing number of Japanese travel abroad, the number of infected Japanese patients returning from endemic areas will increase. It is thus important to identify the presence of these diseases on diagnosis.