Infectious Diseases along the Silk Roads [electronic resource] : The Spread of Parasitoses and Culture Past and Today / edited by Heinz Mehlhorn, Xiaoying Wu, Zhongdao Wu.

Part 1: The Silk Roads: Past and Future -- Chapter 1: Network expansion and disease spread along the former and present straits of the Silk Road(s) and other international straits -- Chapter 2: Belt and Road Initiative Revisited -- Chapter 3: Economic Development and Health Care Status in Silk Road Countries -- Chapter 4: Traditional medicines along the BRI countries -- Part 2: Parasite and Disease Spread along the Silk Roads: A Review to date -- Chapter 5: Infectious diseases in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries -- Chapter 6: Disease details on plague (Black Death), cholera, brucellosis, and tick-borne encephalitis along the Silk Road(s) of former and recent times -- Chapter 7: Plague disease - from Asia to Europe and back along the Silk Road -- Chapter 8: Dengue along the silk road -- Chapter 9: Intestinal Parasites at the Xuanquanzhi relay station on the Silk Road 2,000 Years Ago -- Chapter 10: Dicrocoelium in Iran: From Bronze Age to the 21st century -- Chapter 11: Development of vaccines to stop endemic of hydatid diseases and promote connectivity of BRI.

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.