Global burden, distribution, and interventions for infectious diseases of poverty

Infectious diseases of poverty(IDoP)disproportionately affect the poorest population in the world and contribute to a cycle of poverty as a result of decreased productivity ensuing from long-term illness,disability,and social stigma.In 2010,the global deaths from HIV/AIDS have increased to 1.5 million and malaria mortality rose to 1.17 million.Mortality from neglected tropical diseases rose to 152,000,while tuberculosis killed 1.2 million people that same year.Substantial regional variations exist in the distribution of these diseases as they are primarily concentrated in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa,Asia,and Latin America,with geographic overlap and high levels of co-infection.Evidence-based interventions exist to prevent and control these diseases,however,the coverage still remains low with an emerging challenge of antimicrobial resistance.Therefore,community-based delivery platforms are increasingly being advocated to ensure sustainability and combat co-infections.Because of the high morbidity and mortality burden of these diseases,especially in resource-poor settings,it is imperative to conduct a systematic review to identify strategies to prevent and control these diseases.Therefore,we attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of one of these strategies,that is community-based delivery for the prevention and treatment of IDoP.In this paper,we describe the burden,epidemiology,and potential interventions for IDoP.In subsequent papers of this series,we describe the analytical framework and the methodology used to guide the systematic reviews,and report the findings and interpretations of our analyses of the impact of community-based strategies on individual IDoPs.

Neglected tropical diseases:an effective global response to local poverty-related disease priorities

Background:Neglected tropical diseases(NTDs)have long been overlooked in the global health agenda.They are intimately related to poverty,cause important local burdens of disease,but individually do not represent global priorities.Yet,NTDs were estimated to affect close to 2 billion people at the turn of the millennium,with a collective burden equivalent to HIV/AIDS,tuberculosis,or malaria.A global response was therefore warranted.Main text:The World Health Organization(WHO)conceived an innovative strategy in the early 2000s to combat NTDs as a group of diseases,based on a combination of five public health interventions.Access to essential NTD medicines has hugely improved thanks to strong public-private partnership involving the pharmaceutical sector.The combination of a WHO NTD roadmap with clear targets to be achieved by 2020 and game-changing partner commitments endorsed in the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases,have led to unprecedented progress in the implementation of large-scale preventive treatment,case management and care of NTDs.The coming decade will see as challenges the mainstreaming of these NTD interventions into Universal Health Coverage and the coordination with other sectors to get to the roots of poverty and scale up transmissionbreaking interventions.Chinese expertise with the elimination of multiple NTDs,together with poverty reduction and intersectoral action piloted by municipalities and local governments,can serve as a model for the latter.The international community will also need to keep a specific focus on NTDs in order to further steer this global response,manage the scaling up and sustainment of NTD interventions globally,and develop novel products and implementation strategies for NTDs that are still lagging behind.Conclusions:The year 2020 will be crucial for the future of the global response to NTDs.Progress against the 2020 roadmap targets will be assessed,a new 2021–2030 NTD roadmap will be launched,and the London Declaration commitments will need to be renewed.It is hoped that during the coming decade the global response will be able to further build on today’s successes,align with the new global health and development frameworks,but also keep focused attention on NTDs and mobilize enough resources to see the effort effectively through to 2030.

Major parasitic diseases of poverty in China's Mainland: perspectives for better contro

Significant progress has been made in the prevention,control,and elimination of human parasitic diseases in China in the past 60 years.However,parasitic diseases of poverty remain major causes of morbidity and mortality,and inflict enormous economic costs on societies.In this article,we review the prevalence rates,geographical distributions,epidemic characteristics,risk factors,and clinical manifestations of parasitic diseases of poverty listed in the first issue of the journal Infectious Diseases of Poverty on 25 October 2012.We also address the challenges facing control of parasitic diseases of poverty and provide suggestions for better control.

Infectious Diseases of Poverty,the first five years

Although the focus in the area of health research may be shifting from infectious to non-communicable diseases,the infectious diseases of poverty remain a major burden of disease of global health concern.A global platform to communicate and share the research on these diseases is needed to facilitate the translation of knowledge into effective approaches and tools for their elimination.Based on the“One health,One world”mission,a new,openaccess journal,Infectious Diseases of Poverty(IDP),was launched by BioMed Central in partnership with the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases(NIPD),Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention(China CDC)on October 25,2012.Its aim is to identify and assess research and information gaps that hinder progress towards new interventions for a particular public health problem in the developing world.From the inaugural IDP issue of October 25,2012,a total of 256 manuscripts have been published over the following five years.Apart from a small number of editorials,opinions,commentaries and letters to the editor,the predominant types of publications are research articles(69.5%)and scoping reviews(21.5%).A total of 1081 contributing authors divided between 323 affiliations across 68 countries,territories and regions produced these 256 publications.The journal is indexed in major international biomedical databases,including Web of Science,PubMed,Scopus and Embase.In 2015,it was assigned its first impact factor(4.11),which is now 2.13.During the past five years,IDP has received manuscripts from 90 countries,territories and regions across six continents with an annual acceptance rate of all contributions maintained at less than 40%.Content analysis shows that neglected tropical diseases(NTDs),followed by the“Big Three”(HIV/AIDS,malaria and tuberculosis)and infectious diseases in general comprise 88%of all publications.In addition,a series of 10 thematic issues,covering 118 publications in all,was published as separate parts of the first five volumes.These publications were cited 975 times,which equals an average of 8.3 times per publication.The current challenge is to identify cutting-edge research topics and attract and to publish first-rate publications leading to increasing importance and impact of the journal in its field.

Combating infectious diseases of poverty: a year on

The Infectious Diseases of Poverty journal,launched a year ago,is a platform to engage outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries,and disseminate high quality science towards the improvement of health.This paper reviews the milestone achievements during its first year of operation.The journal has filled an important niche,addressing some of the main priorities in the Global Report for Research on Infectious Diseases of Poverty.Highlights include the publication of three thematic issues on health systems,surveillance and response systems,as well as co-infection and syndemics.The thematic issues have foregrounded the importance and innovation that can be achieved through transdisciplinary research.The journal has been indexed by PubMed since April 2013,with the publication of a total of 38 articles.Finally,the journal is delivering to wider range readers both in developing and developed countries with sustained efforts with a focus on relevant and strategic information towards elimination of infectious diseases of poverty.

Tackling the existing burden of infectious diseases in the developing world: existing gaps and the way forward

This series evaluates the effectiveness of community-based interventions(CBIs)to prevent and control infectious diseases of poverty(IDoP).Evidence from our reviews suggests that CBIs and school-based delivery platforms are effective in averting risk behaviors and reducing the disease burden.Co-implementation of interventions through existing community-based programs including immunization campaigns,antenatal care and maternal and child health programs have the potential to scale-up interventions for IDoP.Future research should focus on the process of developing and implementing efficient community-based programs through a comprehensive approach,and to gauge the effectiveness of various existing delivery models in order to improve morbidity and mortality outcomes.

Development of a data collection and management system in West Africa:challenges and sustainability

Background:Developing and sustaining a data collection and management system(DCMS)is difficult in malariaendemic countries because of limitations in internet bandwidth,computer resources and numbers of trained personnel.The premise of this paper is that development of a DCMS in West Africa was a critically important outcome of the West African International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research.The purposes of this paper are to make that information available to other investigators and to encourage the linkage of DCMSs to international research and Ministry of Health data systems and repositories.Methods:We designed and implemented a DCMS to link study sites in Mali,Senegal and The Gambia.This system was based on case report forms for epidemiologic,entomologic,clinical and laboratory aspects of plasmodial infection and malarial disease for a longitudinal cohort study and included on-site training for Principal Investigators and Data Managers.Based on this experience,we propose guidelines for the design and sustainability of DCMSs in environments with limited resources and personnel.Results:From 2012 to 2017,we performed biannual thick smear surveys for plasmodial infection,mosquito collections for anopheline biting rates and sporozoite rates and year-round passive case detection for malarial disease in four longitudinal cohorts with 7708 individuals and 918 households in Senegal,The Gambia and Mali.Major challenges included the development of uniform definitions and reporting,assessment of data entry error rates,unstable and limited internet access and software and technology maintenance.Strengths included entomologic collections linked to longitudinal cohort studies,on-site data centres and a cloud-based data repository.Conclusions:At a time when research on diseases of poverty in low and middle-income countries is a global priority,the resources available to ensure accurate data collection and the electronic availability of those data remain severely limited.Based on our experience,we suggest the development of a regional DCMS.This approach is more economical than separate data centres and has the potential to improve data quality by encouraging shared case definitions,data validation strategies and analytic approaches including the molecular analysis of treatment successes and failures.