Surveys of Anopheles mosquitoes were conducted in urban, rural, and natural areas of Tajikistan to obtain updated information on their distributions, especially in southern districts of the country where malaria is a prevalent disease. Nine species of Anopheles are found in Tajikistan. Anopheles superpictus, An. claviger, An. hyrcanus, and An. pulcherrimus are the most widespread and abundant species. Investigations in northern Tajikistan confirmed the presence of An. artemievi and the absence of An. martinius, both members of the An. maculipennis complex of malaria vectors. Anopheles barianensis, An. lindesayi, and An. marteri sogdianus, species previously recorded in the country, were not encountered during our surveys. The history of Anopheles and malaria research in Tajikistan is reviewed and bionomical and distributional information is provided for each of the nine species.
Malaria was eliminated in Tajikistan by the beginning of the 1960s. However, sporadic introduced cases of malaria occurred subsequently probably as a result of transmission from infected mosquito Anopheles flying over river the Punj from the border areas of Afghanistan. During the 1970s and 1980s local outbreaks of malaria were reported in the southern districts bordering Afghanistan. The malaria situation dramatically changed during the 1990s following armed conflict and civil unrest in the newly independent Tajikistan, which paralyzed health services including the malaria control activities and a large-scale malaria epidemic occurred with more than 400,000 malaria cases. The malaria epidemic was contained by 1999 as a result of considerable financial input from the Government and the international community. Although Plasmodium falciparum constituted only about 5% of total malaria cases, reduction of its incidence was slower than that of Plasmodium vivax. To prevent increase in P. falciparum malaria both in terms of incidence and territory, a P. falciparum elimination programme in the Republic was launched in 200, jointly supported by the Government and the Global Fund for control of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The main activities included the use of pyrethroids for the IRS with determined periodicity, deployment of mosquito nets, impregnated with insecticides, use of larvivorous fishes as a biological larvicide, implementation of small-scale environmental management, and use of personal protection methods by population under malaria risk. The malaria surveillance system was strengthened by the use of ACD, PCD, RCD and selective use of mass blood surveys. All detected cases were timely epidemiologically investigated and treated based on the results of laboratory diagnosis. As a result, by 2009, P. falciparum malaria was eliminated from all of Tajikistan, one year ahead of the originally targeted date. Elimination of P. falciparum also contributed towards speedy reduction of P. vivax incidence in Tajikistan.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12936-017-1861-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Entomological surveys were conducted in the malaria-endemic southwestern region of Tajikistan to establish which species of Anopheles may be responsible for malaria transmission. The head-thorax portions of 2,213 wild-caught Anopheles females-Anopheles superpictus Grassi (n = 1,292), Anopheles pulcherrimus Theobald (n = 376), Anopheles hyrcanus (Pallas) (n = 544), and Anopheles claviger (Meigen) (Diptera: Culicidae) (n = 1)-were tested for the presence of Plasmodium sporozoites using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Four females of An. superpictus (three captured when landing on humans and one resting indoors) and one female of An. hyrcanus (captured when landing on a human indoors) were positive for Plasmodium vivax (Haemosporida: Plasmodiidae) VK-210. The infected females of An. superpictus were captured in the Hamadoni and Yovon districts of the Khatlon province, and the single infected female of An. hyrcanus was captured in the Jilikul district of the Khatlon province.
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