Abstract. Global commerce, travel, and emerging and resurging infectious diseases have increased awareness of global health threats and opportunities for collaborative and service learning. We review course materials, knowledge archives, data management archives, and student evaluations for the first 10 years of an intensive summer field course in infectious disease epidemiology and surveillance offered in Jamaica. We have trained 300 students from 28 countries through collaboration between the University of the West Indies and U.S. partner universities. Participants were primarily graduate students in public health, but also included health professionals with terminal degrees, and public health nurses and inspectors. Strong institutional synergies, committed faculty, an emphasis on scientific and cultural competencies, and use of team-based field research projects culminate in a unique training environment that provides participants with careerdeveloping experiences. We share lessons learned over the past decade, and conclude that South-to-North leadership is critical in shaping transdisciplinary, cross-cultural, global health practice.

Dengue fever has re-emerged as an increasingly significant global health threat amid diminishing resources pledged for its control in developing nations. Efforts to limit breeding of the dengue vector Aedes aegypti are often hampered by lack of community awareness of the disease. Methods: Sixty-eight households in St Catherine Parish, Jamaica completed a pilot knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaire as part of a routine container survey for presence of A. aegypti larvae. Results: Infestation levels were high according to traditional Stegomyia indices (Breteau index = 325); however, general knowledge of dengue symptoms, A. aegypti breeding sites, and preventive practices was low. After examining the links between demographic characteristics, dengue knowledge, and the number of breeding sites per house, higher educational achievement was associated with higher dengue knowledge, but also with more unprotected containers. Overall dengue knowledge was not associated with household container counts. Spatial statistics identified weak clustering of larvae-positive containers, and larvae were concentrated in three key container types. Conclusion: Residents may only understand the role of certain container types, and significant gaps in general knowledge of the disease may inhibit vector control. This pilot demonstrates the feasibility of conducting inexpensive, rapid assessment of community knowledge and breeding levels for local governments lacking the resources for a more methodologically robust vector assessment strategy.

Epidemiological evidence arising mainly from studies undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that sleeping under insecticide-treated mosquito nets is a cost-effective and efficacious method of controlling malaria. For this reason, promotion of use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) has become a key malaria control strategy. In 1999, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and WHO set the goal of providing 32 million nets and 320 million net treatments a year for the next 10 years to protect 80% of African households against malaria. All pesticides are toxic by nature and are associated with adverse health risks that depend on the toxicity of each chemical, as well as the type and degree of exposure. Thus, massive scale-up of use of ITNs in malaria endemic poor countries can be expected to present tangible risks to health, especially where the insecticides for net treatment and re-treatment are handled mostly by untrained persons in uncontrolled settings. This paper examines potential health risks of mass use of ITNs in malaria endemic poor countries and calls for the implementation of strategies to minimize potential risks through careful selection of products, appropriate labeling (including labeling in the local languages of the user communities), pesticide safety education of the public and training of health personnel, and active monitoring of adverse health effects to document actual and potential hazards, and to facilitate planning of mitigation efforts.

No abstract