DOI: 10.1097/01.NT.0000451840.23905.ac

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Issn Print: 1533-7006

Publication Date: 2014/06/19


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INSIDE THE AAN SECTIONS: The AAN Section on Neuro-Infectious Disease

Gina Shaw

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Excerpt

With a membership of a little more than 300, the AAN's Neuro-infectious Disease Section is one of its smallest Sections — but the need it serves is significant.
Elsewhere in the world, the burden of neuro-infectious diseases such as bacterial meningitis, viral encephalitis, toxoplasmosis, rabies, tetanus, and cerebral malaria is high. The World Health Organization has ranked neuro-infectious diseases as the second leading cause of healthy years of life lost to disability among neurologic disorders.
The picture in higher-income countries is quite different: neuro-infectious diseases don't even make the top five among causes of years lost to disability attributed to neurologic disorders. As a result, neuro-infectious disease neurologists are few and far between. AAN surveys have found that only about 10 percent of US neurologists list infectious disease as one of the focuses of their practice, compared with more than 16 percent of international neurologists.
“You'd be hard pressed to find a neurology department in academic medicine, or a private practice in neurology, that doesn't have a stroke neurologist or an epileptologist,” Section Webmaster Cheryl Jay, MD, a, clinical professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, told Neurology Today. “But a lot of places don't have a neuro-infectious disease specialist. Even at many big academic centers, if you're trying to train in this field as a resident, it's more likely than not that there isn't a neurologist with these particular interests to educate you.
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