Some of the strategies for controlling tropical diseases include:

- Draining wetlands to reduce populations of insects and other vectors, or introducing natural predators of the vectors.

- The application of insecticides and/or insect repellents) to strategic surfaces such as clothing, skin, buildings, insect habitats, and bed nets.

- The use of a mosquito net over a bed (also known as a "bed net") to reduce nighttime transmission, since certain species of tropical mosquitoes feed mainly at night.

- Use of water wells, and/or water filtration, water filters, or water treatment with water tablets to produce drinking water free of parasites.

- Sanitation to prevent transmission through human waste.

- In situations where vectors (such as mosquitoes) have become more numerous as a result of human activity, a careful investigation can provide clues: for example, open dumps can contain stagnant water that encourage disease vectors to breed. Eliminating these dumps can address the problem. An education campaign can yield significant benefits at low cost.

- Development and use of vaccines to promote disease immunity.

- Pharmacologic pre-exposure prophylaxis (to prevent disease before exposure to the environment and/or vector).

- Pharmacologic post-exposure prophylaxis (to prevent disease after exposure to the environment and/or vector).

- Pharmacologic treatment (to treat disease after infection or infestation).

- Assisting with economic development in endemic regions. For example, by providing microloans to enable investments in more efficient and productive agriculture. This in turn can help subsistence farming to become more profitable, and these profits can be used by local populations for disease prevention and treatment, with the added benefit of reducing the poverty rate.

- Hospital for Tropical Diseases

- Tropical medicine

- Infectious disease

- Neglected diseases

- List of epidemics

- Waterborne diseases

- Globalization and disease

Identification of microfilariae by microscopic examination is a practical diagnostic procedure. Examination of blood samples will allow identification of microfilariae of "Loa loa". It is important to time the blood collection with the known periodicity of the microfilariae (between 10 am and 2 pm). The blood sample can be a thick smear, stained with Giemsa or haematoxylin and eosin (see staining). For increased sensitivity, concentration techniques can be used. These include centrifugation of the blood sample lyzed in 2% formalin (Knott's technique), or filtration through a Nucleopore membrane.

Antigen detection using an immunoassay for circulating filarial antigens constitutes a useful diagnostic approach, because microfilaremia can be low and variable. Interestingly, the Institute for Tropical Medicine reports that no serologic diagnostics are available. While this was once true, and many of recently developed methods of Antibody detection are of limited value—because substantial antigenic cross reactivity exists between filaria and other parasitic worms (helminths), and a positive serologic test does not necessarily distinguish between infections—up and coming serologic tests that are highly specific to "Loa loa" were furthered in 2008. They have not gone point-of-care yet, but show promise for highlighting high-risk areas and individuals with co-endemic loiasis and onchocerciasis. Specifically, Dr. Thomas Nutman and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health have described the a luciferase immunoprecipitation assay (LIPS) and the related QLIPS (quick version). Whereas a previously described LISXP-1 ELISA test had a poor sensitivity (55%), the QLIPS test is both practical, as it requires only a 15 minutes incubation, and has high sensitivity and specificity (97% and 100%, respectively). No report on the distribution status of LIPS or QLIPS testing is available, but these tests would help to limit complications derived from mass ivermectin treatment for onchocerciasis or dangerous strong doses of diethylcarbamazine for loiasis alone (as pertains to individual with high "Loa loa" microfilarial loads).

Physically, Calabar swellings (see image; needs image) are the primary tool for diagnosis. Identification of adult worms is possible from tissue samples collected during subcutaneous biopsies. Adult worms migrating across the eye are another potential diagnostic, but the short timeframe for the worm's passage through the conjunctiva makes this observation less common.

In the past, health care providers use a provocative injection of "Dirofilaria immitis" as a skin test antigen for filariasis diagnosis. If the patient was infected, the extract would cause an artificial allergic reaction and associated Calabar swelling similar to that caused, in theory, by metabolic products of the worm or dead worms.

Blood tests to reveal microfilaremia are useful in many, but not all cases, as one third of loiasis patients are amicrofilaremic. By contrast, eosinophilia is almost guaranteed in cases of loiasis, and blood testing for eosinophil fraction may be useful.

Biotechnology companies in the developing world have targeted neglected tropical diseases due to need to improve global health.

Mass drug administration is considered a possible method for eradication, especially for lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, and trachoma, although drug resistance is a potential problem. According to Fenwick, Pfizer donated 70 million doses of drugs in 2011 to eliminate trachoma through the International Trachoma Initiative. Merck has helped The African Programme for the Control of Onchocerciasis (APOC) and Oncho Elimination Programme for the Americas to greatly diminished the effect of Onchocerciasis by donating ivermectin. Merck KGaA pledged to give 200 million tablets of praziquantel over 10 years, the only cure for schistosomiasis. GlaxoSmithKline has donated two billion tablets of medicine for lymphatic filariasis and pledged 400 million deworming tablets per year for five years in 2010. Johnson & Johnson has pledged 200 million deworming tablets per year. Novartis has pledged leprosy treatment, EISAI pledged two billion tablets to help treat lymphatic filariasis.

There are currently only two donor-funded non-governmental organizations that focus exclusively on NTDs: the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative and Deworm the World. Despite under-funding, many neglected diseases are cost-effective to treat and prevent. The cost of treating a child for infection of soil transmitted helminths and schistosomes (some of the main causes of neglected diseases), is less than US$0.50 per year, when administered as part of school-based mass deworming by Deworm the World. This programme is recommended by Giving What We Can and the Copenhagen Consensus Centre as one of the most efficient and cost-effective solutions. The efforts of Schistosomiasis Control Initiative to combat neglected diseases include the use of rapid-impact packages: supplying schools with packages including four or five drugs, and training teachers in how to administer them.

Tropical diseases are diseases that are prevalent in or unique to tropical and subtropical regions. The diseases are less prevalent in temperate climates, due in part to the occurrence of a cold season, which controls the insect population by forcing hibernation. However, many were present in northern Europe and northern America in the 17th and 18th centuries before modern understanding of disease causation. The initial impetus for tropical medicine was to protect the health of colonialists, notably in India under the British Raj. Insects such as mosquitoes and flies are by far the most common disease carrier, or vector. These insects may carry a parasite, bacterium or virus that is infectious to humans and animals. Most often disease is transmitted by an insect "bite", which causes transmission of the infectious agent through subcutaneous blood exchange. Vaccines are not available for most of the diseases listed here, and many do not have cures.

Human exploration of tropical rainforests, deforestation, rising immigration and increased international air travel and other tourism to tropical regions has led to an increased incidence of such diseases.

Outbreaks of zoonoses have been traced to human interaction with and exposure to animals at fairs, petting zoos, and other settings. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an updated list of recommendations for preventing zoonosis transmission in public settings. The recommendations, developed in conjunction with the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians, include educational responsibilities of venue operators, limiting public and animal contact, and animal care and management.

Waterborne diseases can have a significant impact on the economy, locally as well as internationally. People who are infected by a waterborne disease are usually confronted with related costs and not seldom with a huge financial burden. This is especially the case in less developed countries. The financial losses are mostly caused by e.g. costs for medical treatment and medication, costs for transport, special food, and by the loss of manpower. Many families must even sell their land to pay for treatment in a proper hospital. On average, a family spends about 10% of the monthly households income per person infected.

In general, specific laboratory tests are not available to rapidly diagnose tick-borne diseases. Due to their seriousness, antibiotic treatment is often justified based on clinical presentation alone.

Diethylcarbamazine has been shown as an effective prophylaxis for "Loa loa" infection.

A study of Peace Corps volunteers in the highly Loa—endemic Gabon, for example, had the following results: 6 of 20 individuals in a placebo group contracted the disease, compared to 0 of 16 in the DEC-treated group. Seropositivity for antifilarial IgG antibody was also much higher in the placebo group. The recommended prophylactic dose is 300 mg DEC given orally once weekly. The only associated symptom in the Peace Corps study was nausea.

Researchers believe that geo-mapping of appropriate habitat and human settlement patterns may, with the use of predictor variables such as forest, land cover, rainfall, temperature, and soil type, allow for estimation of Loa loa transmission in the absence of point-of-care diagnostic tests. In addition to geo-mapping and chemoprophylaxis, the same preventative strategies used for malaria should be undertaken to avoid contraction of loiasis. Specifically, DEET-containing insect repellent, permethrin-soaked clothing, and thick, long-sleeved and long-legged clothing ought to be worn to decrease susceptibility to the bite of the mango or deer fly vector. Because the vector is day-biting, mosquito (bed) nets do not increase protection against loiasis.

Vector elimination strategies are an interesting consideration. It has been shown that the "Chrysops" vector has a limited flying range, but vector elimination efforts are not common, likely because the insects bite outdoors and have a diverse, if not long, range, living in the forest and biting in the open, as mentioned in the vector section.

No vaccine has been developed for loiasis and there is little report on this possibility.

Parasitic infections can usually be treated with antiparasitic drugs.

Albendazole and mebendazole have been the treatments administered to entire populations to control hookworm infection. However, it is a costly option and both children and adults become reinfected within a few months after deparasitation occurs raising concerns because the treatment has to repeatedly be administered and drug resistance may occur.

Another medication administered to kill worm infections has been pyrantel pamoate. For some parasitic diseases, there is no treatment and, in the case of serious symptoms, medication intended to kill the parasite is administered, whereas, in other cases, symptom relief options are used. Recent papers have also proposed the use of viruses to treat infections caused by protozoa.

For a person or companion animal to acquire a tick-borne disease requires that that individual gets bitten by a tick and that that tick feeds for a sufficient period of time. The feeding time required to transmit pathogens differs for different ticks and different pathogens. Transmission of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease is well understood to require a substantial feeding period.

For an individual to acquire infection, the feeding tick must also be infected. Not all ticks are infected. In most places in the US, 30-50% of deer ticks will be infected with "Borrelia burgdorferi" (the agent of Lyme disease). Other pathogens are much more rare. Ticks can be tested for infection using a highly specific and sensitive qPCR procedure. Several commercial labs provide this service to individuals for a fee. The Laboratory of Medical Zoology (LMZ), a nonprofit lab at the University of Massachusetts, provides a comprehensive TickReport for a variety of human pathogens and makes the data available to the public. Those wishing to know the incidence of tick-borne diseases in their town or state can search the LMZ surveillance database.

Pets can transmit a number of diseases. Dogs and cats are routinely vaccinated against rabies. Pets can also transmit ringworm and "Giardia", which are endemic in both animal and human populations. Toxoplasmosis is a common infection of cats; in humans it is a mild disease although it can be dangerous to pregnant women. Dirofilariasis is caused by "Dirofilaria immitis" through mosquitoes infected by mammals like dogs and cats. Cat-scratch disease is caused by "Bartonella henselae" and "Bartonella quintana" from fleas which are endemic in cats. Toxocariasis is infection of humans of any of species of roundworm, including species specific to the dog ("Toxocara canis)" or the cat ("Toxocara cati"). Cryptosporidiosis can be spread to humans from pet lizards, such as the leopard gecko.

The term waterborne disease is reserved largely for infections that predominantly are transmitted through contact with or consumption of infected water. Trivially, many infections may be transmitted by microbes or parasites that accidentally, possibly as a result of exceptional circumstances, have entered the water, but the fact that there might be an occasional freak infection need not mean that it is useful to categorise the resulting disease as "waterborne". Nor is it common practice to refer to diseases such as malaria as "waterborne" just because mosquitoes have aquatic phases in their life cycles, or because treating the water they inhabit happens to be an effective strategy in control of the mosquitoes that are the vectors.

Microorganisms causing diseases that characteristically are waterborne prominently include protozoa and bacteria, many of which are intestinal parasites, or invade the tissues or circulatory system through walls of the digestive tract. Various other waterborne diseases are caused by viruses. (In spite of philosophical difficulties associated with defining viruses as "organisms", it is practical and convenient to regard them as microorganisms in this connection.)

Yet other important classes of water-borne diseases are caused by metazoan parasites. Typical examples include certain Nematoda, that is to say "roundworms". As an example of water-borne Nematode infections, one important waterborne nematodal disease is Dracunculiasis. It is acquired by swallowing water in which certain copepoda occur that act as vectors for the Nematoda. Anyone swallowing a copepod that happens to be infected with Nematode larvae in the genus Dracunculus, becomes liable to infection. The larvae cause guinea worm disease.

Another class of waterborne metazoan pathogens are certain members of the Schistosomatidae, a family of blood flukes. They usually infect victims that make skin contact with the water. Blood flukes are pathogens that cause Schistosomiasis of various forms, more or less seriously affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Long before modern studies had established the germ theory of disease, or any advanced understanding of the nature of water as a vehicle for transmitting disease, traditional beliefs had cautioned against the consumption of water, rather favouring processed beverages such as beer, wine and tea. For example, in the camel caravans that crossed Central Asia along the Silk Road, the explorer Owen Lattimore noted, "The reason we drank so much tea was because of the bad water. Water alone, unboiled, is never drunk. There is a superstition that it causes blisters on the feet."

The list below shows the main diseases that can be passed via the fecal–oral route. They are grouped by the type of pathogen involved in disease transmission.

One approach to changing people's behaviors and stopping open defecation is the community-led total sanitation approach. In this process "live demonstrations" of flies moving from food to fresh human feces and back are used. This can "trigger" villagers into action.

Mammals can get parasites from contaminated food or water, bug bites, or sexual contact. Ingestion of contaminated water can produce Giardia infections.

Parasites normally enter the body through the skin or mouth. Close contact with pets can lead to parasite infestation as dogs and cats are host to many parasites.

Other risks that can lead people to acquire parasites are walking barefeet, inadequate disposal of feces, lack of hygiene, close contact with someone carrying specific parasites, and eating undercooked foods, unwashed fruits and vegetables or foods from contaminated regions.

Parasites can also be transferred to their host by the bite of an insect vector, i.e. mosquito, bed bug, fleas.

The clinical presentation of prion diseases will vary from patient to patient. However, some general characteristics of prion diseases are listed below.

A contagious disease is a subset category of transmissible diseases, which are transmitted to other persons, either by physical contact with the person suffering the disease, or by casual contact with their secretions or objects touched by them or airborne route among other routes.

Non-contagious infections, by contrast, usually require a special mode of transmission between persons or hosts. These include need for intermediate vector species (mosquitoes that carry malaria) or by non-casual transfer of bodily fluid (such as transfusions, needle sharing or sexual contact).

The boundary between contagious and non-contagious infectious diseases is not perfectly drawn, as illustrated classically by tuberculosis, which is clearly transmissible from person to person, but was not classically considered a contagious disease. In the present day, most sexually transmitted diseases are considered contagious, but only some of them are subject to medical isolation.

Some ways to prevent airborne diseases include washing hands, using appropriate hand disinfection, getting regular immunizations against diseases believed to be locally present, wearing a respirator and limiting time spent in the presence of any patient likely to be a source of infection.

Exposure to a patient or animal with an airborne disease does not guarantee receiving the disease. Because of the changes in host immunity and how much the host was exposed to the particles in the air makes a difference to how the disease affects the body.

Antibiotics are not prescribed for patients to control viral infections. They may however be prescribed to a flu patient for instance, to control or prevent bacterial secondary infections. They also may be used in dealing with air-borne bacterial primary infections, such as pneumonic plague.

Additionally the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has told consumers about vaccination and following careful hygiene and sanitation protocols for airborne disease prevention. Consumers also have access to preventive measures like UV Air purification devices that FDA and EPA-certified laboratory test data has verified as effective in inactivating a broad array of airborne infectious diseases. Many public health specialists recommend social distancing to reduce the transmission of airborne infections.

Originally, the term referred as sometimes been broadened to encompass "any" communicable or infectious disease. Often the word can only be understood in context, where it is used to emphasise very infectious, easily transmitted, or especially severe communicable disease. They could be very dangerous.

There continues to be a very practical problem with diagnosis of prion diseases, including BSE and CJD. They have an incubation period of months to decades during which there are no symptoms, even though the pathway of converting the normal brain PrP protein into the toxic, disease-related PrP form has started. At present, there is virtually no way to detect PrP reliably except by examining the brain using neuropathological and immunohistochemical methods after death. Accumulation of the abnormally folded PrP form of the PrP protein is a characteristic of the disease, but it is present at very low levels in easily accessible body fluids like blood or urine. Researchers have tried to develop methods to measure PrP, but there are still no fully accepted methods for use in materials such as blood.

In 2010, a team from New York described detection of PrP even when initially present at only one part in a hundred billion (10) in brain tissue. The method combines amplification with a novel technology called Surround Optical Fiber Immunoassay (SOFIA) and some specific antibodies against PrP. After amplifying and then concentrating any PrP, the samples are labelled with a fluorescent dye using an antibody for specificity and then finally loaded into a micro-capillary tube. This tube is placed in a specially constructed apparatus so that it is totally surrounded by optical fibres to capture all light emitted once the dye is excited using a laser. The technique allowed detection of PrP after many fewer cycles of conversion than others have achieved, substantially reducing the possibility of artefacts, as well as speeding up the assay. The researchers also tested their method on blood samples from apparently healthy sheep that went on to develop scrapie. The animals’ brains were analysed once any symptoms became apparent. The researchers could therefore compare results from brain tissue and blood taken once the animals exhibited symptoms of the diseases, with blood obtained earlier in the animals’ lives, and from uninfected animals. The results showed very clearly that PrP could be detected in the blood of animals long before the symptoms appeared.

Recent research from the University of Toronto and Caprion Pharmaceuticals has discovered one possible avenue that might lead to quicker diagnosis, a vaccine or possibly even treatment for prion diseases. The abnormally folded proteins that cause the disease have been found to expose a side chain of amino acids that the properly folded protein does not expose. Antibodies specifically coded to this side-chain amino acid sequence have been found to stimulate an immune response to the abnormal prions and leave the normal proteins intact.

Another idea involves using custom peptide sequences. Since some research suggests prions aggregate by forming beta barrel structures, work done "in vitro" has shown that peptides made up of beta barrel-incompatible amino acids can help break up accumulations of prion.

A third idea concerns genetic therapy, whereby the gene for encoding protease-resistant protein is considered to be an error in several species, and therefore something to be inhibited.

White plague is a suite of coral diseases of which three types have been identified, initially in the Florida Keys. They are infectious diseases but it has proved difficult to identify the pathogens involved. White plague type II may be caused by the gram negative bacterium "Aurantimonas coralicida" in the order Rhizobiales but other bacteria have also been associated with diseased corals and viruses may also be implicated.

Treponematosis is a term used to collectively or individually describe any of the diseases caused by the bacterial species "Treponema". There are four subspecies described which cause the following diseases:

- Syphilis ("Treponema pallidum pallidum")

- Yaws ("Treponema pallidum pertenue")

- Bejel ("Treponema pallidum endemicum")

- Pinta ("Treponema carateum")

Coral diseases, comprising the diseases that affect corals, injure the living tissues and often result in the death of part or the whole of the colony. These diseases have been occurring more frequently in the twenty-first century as conditions become more stressful for many shallow-water corals. The pathogens causing the diseases include bacteria, fungi and protozoa, but it is not always possible to identify the pathogen involved.

A slow virus is a virus, or a viruslike agent, etiologically associated with a disease, having a long incubation period of months to years and then a gradual onset of symptoms which progress slowly but irreversibly and terminate in a severe compromised state or, more commonly, death.

A slow virus disease is a disease that, after an extended period of latency, follows a slow, progressive course spanning months to years, frequently involving the central nervous system and ultimately leading to death. Examples include the Visna-Maedi virus, in the genus Lentivirus (family Retroviridae), that causes encephalitis and chronic pneumonitis in sheep, and subacute sclerosing panencephalitis which is apparently caused by the measles virus, as well as Paget's Disease of Bone (Osteitis Deformans) which is associated with paramyxoviridae, especially RSV and Rubeola (Measles).