Stephen Berger - Infectious Diseases of Tonga

Infectious Diseases of Tonga - 2021 edition
Stephen Berger, MD
Copyright 2021 by GIDEON Informatics, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by GIDEON Informatics, Inc, Los Angeles, California, USA. www.gideononline.com
Cover design by GIDEON Informatics, Inc
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. Contact GIDEON Informatics at .
ISBN: 978-1-4988-3172-7
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DISCLAIMER
Publisher assumes no liability to patients with respect to the actions of physicians, health care facilities and other users, and is not responsible for any injury, death or damage resulting from the use, misuse or interpretation of information obtained through this book. Therapeutic options listed are limited to published studies and reviews. Therapy should not be undertaken without a thorough assessment of the indications, contraindications and side effects of any prospective drug or intervention. Furthermore, the data for the book are largely derived from incidence and prevalence statistics whose accuracy will vary widely for individual diseases and countries. Changes in endemicity, incidence, and drugs of choice may occur. The list of drugs, infectious diseases and even country names will vary with time.
Scope of Content
Disease designations may reflect a specific pathogen (ie, Adenovirus infection), generic pathology (Pneumonia - bacterial) or etiologic grouping (Coltiviruses - Old world). Such classification reflects the clinical approach to disease allocation in the Infectious Diseases Module of the GIDEON web application. Similarly, a number of diseases which are generally diagnosed and treated outside of the field of Infectious Diseases are not included, despite the fact that a clear infectious etiology exists. Examples include Peptic ulcer, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Human papillomavirus infections, etc. In contrast, a number of other entities of unknown etiology which do present to Infectious Diseases specialists have been included: Kawasaki's disease, Chronic fatigue syndrome, Kikuchi and Kimura diseases. Several minor infections having minimal relevance to the field of Infectious Diseases are not covered: Paronychia, Otitis externa, etc.

Infectious Diseases of Tonga is one in a series of GIDEON ebooks which summarize the status of Infectious diseases, Drugs, Vaccines and Pathogens in every country of the world.
Chapters are arranged alphabetically, by disease name. Each section is divided into three sub-sections:
1. Descriptive epidemiology
2. Status of the disease in Tonga
3. References
The initial items in the first section, Descriptive epidemiology, are defined as follows:

Agent	Classification (e.g., virus, parasite) and taxonomic designation.
Reservoir	Any animal, arthropod, plant, soil or substance in which an infectious agent normally lives and multiplies, on which it depends primarily for survival, and where it reproduces itself in such a manner that it can be transmitted to a susceptible host.
Vector	An arthropod or other living carrier which transports an infectious agent from an infected organism or reservoir to a susceptible individual or immediate surroundings.
Vehicle	The mode of transmission for an infectious agent. This generally implies a passive and inanimate (i.e., non-vector) mode.

A chapter outlining the routine vaccination schedule of Tonga follows the diseases chapters.
Content
There are 361 generic infectious diseases in the world today. 194 of these are endemic, or potentially endemic, to Tonga. A number of other diseases are not relevant to Tonga and have not been included in this book.
In addition to endemic diseases, we have included all published data regarding imported diseases and infection among expatriates from Tonga.
Sources
Data are based on the GIDEON web application (www.gideononline.com) whichrelies on standard text books, peer-review journals, Health Ministry reportsand ProMED, supplemented by an ongoing search of the medical literature.
The availability and quality of literature regarding specific infectious diseases vary from country to country. As such, you may find that many of the sections in this book are limited to a general discussion of the disease itself - with no data regarding Tonga.
This is a book about the geography and epidemiology of Infection. Comprehensive and up-to-date information regarding the causes, diagnosis and treatment of each disease is available in the GIDEON web application. Many of the diseases are generic. For example, such designations as Pneumonia bacterial and Urinary tract infection include a number of individual diseases. These appear under the subheading, Synonyms, listed under each disease.
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Last updated: February 27, 2021