• Young-June Choe, Seung-Ah Choe, and Sung-Il Cho.
• Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea.
• Travel Med Infect Dis. 2017 Sep 1; 19: 22-27.

BackgroundInternational travel has an important role in transmission of emerging infectious diseases. We described the imported infectious diseases in Korea from 2003 to 2012, and to analyze association of travels with the change in the incidences.MethodsWe used National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System to investigate the incidence of salmonellosis, shigellosis, malaria, and dengue. Data from Korea Tourism Organization was used to describe the inbound and outbound travelers by their age group, gender, and purpose of travel. We assessed association between international travel and the incidence of the infectious diseases, and seasonal variability.ResultsAmong 1849 imported cases, dengue comprised the largest number with 631 cases. The proportion of imported cases among total cases gradually increased from 4.1% in 2003 to 30.3% in 2012 (P < 0.001). There was a positive correlation between the number of travelers and the number of imported cases of shigellosis, dengue (P < 0.001), but not for malaria. Seasonal variability was observed for importation of salmonellosis, shigellosis and dengue fever (P = 0.005).ConclusionInternational travel was associated with the incidence of imported infectious diseases in Korea. Pre-travel consultation for international travelers planned to visit endemic area should be recommended strongly.Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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