Between 1339 and 1351 AD, a pandemic of plague traveled from

Between 1339 and 1351 AD, a pandemic of plague traveled from China to Europe, known in Western history as The Black Death. Carried by rats and fleas along the Silk Road Caravan routes and Spice trading sea routes, the Black Death reached the Mediterranean Basin in 1347, and was rapidly carried throughout Europe from what was then the center of European trade. Eventually, even areas of European settlement as isolated as Viking settlements in Greenland would be ravaged …

…during and after World War One is one example, carried by soldiers returning home from the unsanitary trenches of the Western Front. Filoviruses, such as Marburg and Ebola, are known to be transmitted out of Africa by the trade in medical research monkeys. HIV is thought to have spread throughout Central Africa by truck drivers sleeping with infected prostitutes along highway stops. Trade continues to have a strong connection with the spread of deadly diseases.