There are various infections today that are seen as tropical diseases. But historically, these were the diseases that only affected people in extremely cold climates or perhaps temperate areas (the regions between tropic and polar circles).  Diseases typical of this are: hookworm infections (which probably infect more than 600 million people around the world) and malaria (mosquito-borne infectious disease which is contracted by mosquito bites).  As well, there is the rare lagochilascaris minor disease (but as yet there has only been one fatality reported from this, so it really is extremely rare).

A lot of these tropical diseases in today’s modern world are really not an issue due to major advancements in health and sanitations, personal hygiene and diet.  As well, today these diseases – if they do occur – are not climate-controlled so there has been talk of renaming Tropical Diseases to Geographic Medicine or even Third World Medicine.