Geography, ecology and emerging infectious diseases

Emerging infectious diseases are the focus of increased attention and even alarm in the scholarly and popular literature. The emergence of new disease s and the resurgence of older and previously recognized infectious diseases both in developing and developed country poses challenges for understandin g the:ecological web of causation, including social, economic, environmenta l and biological components. This paper is a synthesis of the major charact eristics of emerging diseases, in an interdisciplinary context. Political e cology is one framework for analysis that is promising in developing a modi fied ecology of disease. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .