A preliminary study of the significance of ticks and tick-borne diseases in South-east Asia

Introduction Ticks and tick-borne diseases are of major significance both as factors directly influencing human health and also as factors reducing potential protein production in many countries where they dramatically reduce the health of domestic stock (13, 39, 47). In some areas, such as Europe, North America and Africa, the significance of ticks is well known and a great deal of effort has gone into characterizing the diseases which they transmit. This is not true for South-east Asia where comparatively little has been published on the medical and veterinary significance of tick-borne diseases (50). In this publication I hope to give some background on the tick-borne diseases of this area.