Infectious Diseases along the Silk Roads - The Spread of Parasitoses and Culture Past and Today

The heart of this volume is exploring the links between human disease spread and the broad Silk Road trading networks which connect Eurasian civilizations past and today. Compiled by an international team of subject authors, this book includes two themed parts. Readers are first introduced into history naming, former, present and future routes of the Silk Road, representing the longest trade way and culture diffuser in the world. The second part contains the main book focus and addresses medical research as well as individual diseases and parasite groups from the region in detail. By drawing an arc between the past and present disease situation, the authors trace how parasites and vectors spread around the globe, and what impact infectious diseases had and will have upon human civilizations.

Through its interdisciplinary character this book will be enjoyed by interested readers from the fields of parasitology and palaeoparasitology, medical sciences and public health, as well as cultural history.

Prof. Dr. Heinz Mehlhorn has retired from Düsseldorf University and was President of the German and World Societies of Parasitology and Protozoology. He has published 80 parasitology books and is currently chairman of a German company, which has developed products against parasites.

Prof. Zhongdao Wu, PhD is an internationally well known Professor of human parasitology at the Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, China. He is engaged in research projects on prevention and control of parasitic diseases such as snail-borne parasitic diseases as well as schistosomiasis, liver fluke, as well as mosquito-borne diseases. He has also participated in multiple international cooperation projects and thus visited countries such as Niger, Zanzibar, Nepal, Thailand, Pakistan, Laos, etc. to exchange ideas on parasitic disease prevention and control. As teacher he is engaged in the Medical school, where he also has trained many graduate students and doctors from the Belt and Road countries thus spreading important knowledge.
Dr. Xiaoying Wu has received her Ph.D. at the School of Public Health at the Sun Yat-sen University. She studied at the University of Birmingham (UK) and completed her postdoctoral work at the School of Public Health at Fudan University. Currently, she is employed at the Department of Gastroenterology at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Her primary research focus is on clinical epidemiology of chronic and infectious inflammatory diseases. Dr. Wu led a graduate research team conducting a three-year field epidemiological investigation in the schistosomiasis japonica endemic areas in China, and established a cohort of patients with advanced schistosomiasis japonica. She also participated in teaching the clinical eight-year program course 'Tropical Diseases and Global Health'. In addition Dr. Wu is a member of the Health Data and Digital Medicine Branch of the China International Exchange and Promotive Association for Medical and Health Care.