Infection Tracking in Travellers (ITIT)

International travel is growing exponentially. Globally, there will be a projected 1.8 billion traveller arrivals in 2030. Current surveillance of travellers' health is top-down (i.e., clinicians/laboratories report illness) and only a small proportion of illness events are captured. More data are needed on the types of infections acquired by different groups who have varying purposes of travel such as business/corporate travellers, those visiting friends and relatives (VFR), leisure/tourist travellers and mass gathering event (Hajj, Olympics, World Cup) attendees. More data are needed to profile infections in travellers according to age and sex as men and women have different infection susceptibilities. Infectious diseases, in particular the spread of malaria and "arboviral infections",(i.e. viruses such as dengue) pose major threats with changing epidemiology influenced by climate, environmental factors and human mobility. The extent and impact of these infections on travellers' health and their long-term sequelae have scarcely been evaluated. The collected data will allow the profiling of infections in travellers according to purpose of travel and according to age and sex. Men and women have different infection susceptibilities but there is just one study on this theme in the context of travel medicine Infectious diseases, in particular the spread of malaria and "arboviral infections", i.e. viruses such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika pose major threats with changing areas of transmission influenced by climate and mobility. Although airline statistics are available on traveller numbers, the volume of ill, returning, possibly viremic travellers entering areas, where susceptible vectors exist has never been quantified. The situation of a twin presence of viremic travellers and competent Aedes vectors may lead to the onward transmission of arboviral infections. The ITIT project, evaluating in-travel and post-travel illness profiles, coupled with geo-location and meteorological data, will yield the granular data needed for personalized travel medicine. This is important given the heterogenicity and increasing volume of global travellers. The project has the support of the World Health Organization (WHO). Since the data will be collected anonymously via a questionnaire on the designed mobile App and the study is non-interventional, the risk category for this project is minimal (A).