Affiliations 

  • 1 UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 2 Department of Vector Biology, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom
  • 3 Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (WHO/NTD), World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 4 Dengue Control Program, Ministry of Health, Brasilia, Brazil
  • 5 Department of Communicable Diseases, Ministry of Health, Bogota, Colombia
  • 6 Program for the Prevention and Control of Dengue, Ministry of Health, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
  • 7 Department of Public Health, Ministry of Health, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 8 Centro Nacional de Programas Preventivos y Control de Enfermedades (CENAPRECE), Ministry of Health, Mexico City, Mexico
  • 9 Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
  • 10 Facultad de Agronomia, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
  • 11 Department for Disease Control and Prevention, Pasteur Institute, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
  • 12 PAHO/AMRO, World Health Organization, Washington, DC, United States of America
  • 13 PAHO/AMRO, World Health Organization, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 14 Institute of Public Health, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
PLoS Negl Trop Dis, 2018 02;12(2):e0005967.
PMID: 29389959 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0005967

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Research has been conducted on interventions to control dengue transmission and respond to outbreaks. A summary of the available evidence will help inform disease control policy decisions and research directions, both for dengue and, more broadly, for all Aedes-borne arboviral diseases.

METHOD: A research-to-policy forum was convened by TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, with researchers and representatives from ministries of health, in order to review research findings and discuss their implications for policy and research.

RESULTS: The participants reviewed findings of research supported by TDR and others. Surveillance and early outbreak warning. Systematic reviews and country studies identify the critical characteristics that an alert system should have to document trends reliably and trigger timely responses (i.e., early enough to prevent the epidemic spread of the virus) to dengue outbreaks. A range of variables that, according to the literature, either indicate risk of forthcoming dengue transmission or predict dengue outbreaks were tested and some of them could be successfully applied in an Early Warning and Response System (EWARS). Entomological surveillance and vector management. A summary of the published literature shows that controlling Aedes vectors requires complex interventions and points to the need for more rigorous, standardised study designs, with disease reduction as the primary outcome to be measured. House screening and targeted vector interventions are promising vector management approaches. Sampling vector populations, both for surveillance purposes and evaluation of control activities, is usually conducted in an unsystematic way, limiting the potentials of entomological surveillance for outbreak prediction. Combining outbreak alert and improved approaches of vector management will help to overcome the present uncertainties about major risk groups or areas where outbreak response should be initiated and where resources for vector management should be allocated during the interepidemic period.

CONCLUSIONS: The Forum concluded that the evidence collected can inform policy decisions, but also that important research gaps have yet to be filled.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.