Advances in Emerging and Neglected Infectious Diseases

Emerging and neglected infections have proven to be highly lethal with mortality rates ranging from 10 to 80%. However, with a low incidence of disease, less public attention and support have been directed at these infections. Much more research is devoted to infections with a large public health impact, neglecting these potential diseases. Nonetheless, there are numerous infectious diseases waiting for the evolutionary or nefarious alteration that will allow them to spread readily among the human population. At the time of conception of this special issue, the Zika virus epidemic in the Western Hemisphere has been raging for over a year continually spreading northward from Brazil and Colombia into Latin America, Mexico, and finally the United States of America. Zika has grabbed the public's attention and forced it to pay attention to this emerging disease with over 125,000 cases in 40 countries. However, the Zika virus was originally identified in 1947 with the first human cases documented in 1952 in Uganda. Subsequently, only sporadic human infections were reported until the localized Yap Island outbreak in 2007. Zika virus then receded into obscurity until the recent explosion of Zika-associated microcephaly cases. However, this is just the latest in a string of emerging or neglected diseases to bask in the stage lights of the public health community. Similarly, the Ebola virus outbreak of 2014–2016 is just the latest in a long series of local, regional, and global outbreaks spanning all the way back to 1976. We cannot ignore pathogens with low incidences of disease as these are just the pathogens that could cause the next epidemic. Therefore, we have assembled a series of manuscripts addressing the topic of this special issue. Manuscripts published in this special issue address topics in bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections ranging from novel treatments and diagnostics to epidemiology and clinical studies. K. C. Kosinski et al. from the United States of Amer-ica present a comparative epidemiological study of several assessments indicative of a clinical diagnostic of Schistosoma haematobium in Ghanaian children and found agreement between a dipstick self-test and clinical diagnosis of the presence of eggs in the urine. A. Vina-Rodriguez et al. from Germany describe a novel TaqMan-based quantitative real-time PCR assay for the diagnosis and differentiation of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. This high throughput assay could greatly facilitate detection and surveillance of VEEV. S. Petti et al. from Italy present an epidemiological study of healthcare …