Endemic (epidemiology)

In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic (from Greek ἐν en "in, within" and δῆμος demos "people") in a population when that infection is maintained in the population without the need for external inputs. For example, chickenpox is endemic (steady state) in the UK, but malaria is not. Every year, there are a few cases of malaria reported in the UK, but these do not lead to sustained transmission in the population due to the lack of a suitable vector (mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles).