Mobility oflarge parts of the human population, whether related to
commercial necessity, touristic activities or to migration induced by
war and social pressure, carried and carries the risk of spreading
infections. Modem air travel effectively circumvents existing quarantine
regulations as infected individuals thereby can reach almost every
geographic location while stiIl in the incubation phase of the disease.
Hence, infections previously restricted to distinet regions due to their
strict association with non-human reservoirs or vectors can suddenly
surface in non-endemic areas where lacking experience and technical
means make clinical and laboratory diagnosis difficult. Excellent
examples for such situations are many vector- or rodent-borne viruses
but also hepatitis viruses, the human immunodeficiency virus and, last
but not least, filoviruses. The following articles are based on papers
presented at an international symposium on "Imported Virus Infections"
heI d at the Max von Pettenkofer Institute, University ofMunich, Munich,
Germany on March 31 to Aprill, 1995. They illustrate today's knowledge
on the epidemiology, dynamics of spread, as weIl as the frequently
limited possibilities of prevention and therapeutic treat- ment of
associated disease. Special emphasis was placed on filovirus infections
which, as if to highlight the topics of the symposium, reappeared and
spread in Zaire in the first half of 1995. The symposium was dedicated
to the memory of Friedrich Deinhardt M.D., virologist, professor and
director of the Max von Pettenkofer Institute for Hygiene and Medical
Microbiology from 1977 unt il he died on April 30, 1992.