Executive Summary
Global bio-security threats such as the spread of emerging infectious diseases (i.e.,avian influenza, SARS, Hendra, Nipah, etc.) and bioterrorism have generated significant interest in recent years. There is considerable effort directed towards understanding and negating the proliferation of infectious diseases. Biosensors are an attractive tool which has the potential to detect the outbreak of a virus and/or disease. Although there is a host of technologies available, either commercially or in the scientific literature, the development of biosensors for the detection of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) is still in its infancy. There is no doubt that the glucose biosensor, the gene chip, the protein chip, etc. have all played and are still playing a significant role in monitoring various bio-molecules. Can biosensors play an important role for the detection of emerging infectious diseases? What does the future hold and which biosensor technology platform is suitable for the real-time detection of infectious diseases? These and many other questions will be addressed in this review. The purpose of this review is to present an overview of biosensors particularly in relation to EIDs. It provides a synopsis of the various types of biosensor technologies that have been used to detect EIDs, and describes some of the technologies behind them in terms of transduction and bio-receptor principles.

Introduction
There is great deal of interest in monitoring and controlling the spread of emerging infectious diseases (EID) in the international community.1–7 EIDs can be broadly classified as: (a) new, previously unrecognised diseases (e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome); (b) known diseases which have increased in incidence, virulence or geographic range over the past several decades (e.g., foot-and-mouth disease); and (c) diseases which threaten to