Infectious Diseases

This volume on Infectious Diseases in an Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology (ESST) addresses the needs of health care providers and policy makers as well as scientists and engineers. Most of chapters in this volume deal with infectious diseases that directly affect humans, including the detailed characterization of specific pathogens, how they reproduce, how they are transmitted, and the means available to control, eliminate, or eradicate them.

In this revised and updated second edition, the number of human infectious diseases covered has been significantly expanded. Other new chapters deal with current leading edge technologies for the diagnosis of pathogens; surveillance including environmental and syndromic surveillance for pathogens; requirements for quality assurance, quality control and the need for biological standards and controls to sustain high quality diagnosis and surveillance; the use of big data for personalized medicine; modeling infectious diseases; zoonotic and vector borne diseases; disease prevention with antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines; and factors that affect ecological balances leading to emergence of new diseases such as climate change and deforestation. Finally, infectious diseases that affect livestock and culture of plants for food, comfort and beauty are also addressed, since we must also consider them when discussing sustainability of humans in our ecosystem.

Assoc. Prof. Lester M. Shulman, (BSc, Yale University; MA, Brandeis University; PhD Weizmann Institute of Science) conducted basic research on anti-viral and anti-cancer activities of cytokines at the Weizmann Institute of Science (1984 -1989), investigated causes of acute renal failure as Head of the Nephrology Laboratory at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel( 1990-1993), and then studied molecular epidemiology of viruses at the Israeli Public Health Services Central Virology Laboratory at the Sheba Medical Center where he headed the Environmental Virology Laboratory and the Israel National Center for Viral Gastroenteritis (1993-2015). His main interest included the study of the molecular biology of enteric viruses and Waste Water Based Epidemiology. As a leading researcher in the field, he participated in international meetings establishing WHO standard guidelines for environmental surveillance for poliovirus.