UNLABELLED The internationally accepted limit values and the health effects of hand-transmitted vibration exposure have been described extensively in the literature from temperate climate countries but not from a tropical climate environment. OBJECTIVES We conducted a systematic review of the health effects of hand-transmitted vibration exposure in tropical countries to determine the characte...

The tropics, sadly, continues to be a belt of poverty. The countries of the tropics all have low or middling incomes, with a few tiny or natural-resource-rich exceptions, and few of the poorest countries are outside of the tropics. The causes of tropical poverty are surely complex, involving initial endowments (Diamond), history, especially colonization, and geographical isolation (Gallup and S...

Inadequate funding from developed countries has hampered international efforts to conserve biodiversity in tropical forests. We present two complementary research approaches that reveal a significant increase in public demand for conservation within tropical developing countries as those countries reach upper-middle-income (UMI) status. We highlight UMI tropical countries because they contain n...

malaria is a major problem in tropical and sub-tropical countries, with high morbidity and mortality. splenectomy makes patients more susceptible to serious bacterial and parasitic infections. we report for the first time in iran a fatal case of plasmodium vivax malaria, confirmed by microscopic and molecu­lar (semi-nested multiplex pcr) tests in a patient who had undergone splenectomy due to h...

Vascular diseases of the brain are the second reason of the death and the first cause of morbidity and disability worldwide. In tropical areas stroke has some particular features related to the nature of torrid zones. There are some special causes of the stroke, mainly infectious, although some of them are non-infectious. The most important etiologies are malaria, tuberculosis, cysticercosis, s...

Of the many causes of ill-health among children of the tropics malnutrition is undoubtedly the most important. Apart from its direct effects on health, malnutrition also exerts an indirect effect by diminishing resistance to infecious diseases. The infant and child mortality rates in tropical countries are high. In India, according to the latest census figures, while infants and children under ...

Influenza viruses cause annual epidemics of respiratory tract disease that affect all age groups. Many developing countries do not have an influenza surveillance system or adequate laboratory capacity for virus detection. The objective of this study was to describe the influenza surveillance systems in the different countries in the tropics and to identify outstanding research needs. A question...