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Background: Countries in Southeast Asia have been at the epicentre of epidemics of emerging and re-emerging zoonotic infectious diseases. Successful infection control requires a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach that incorporates communitybased surveillance and control activities. The objective of this systematic review is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the evidence regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of communitybased programs for the control of emerging zoonotic diseases in Southeast Asia.Methods: PubMed, CINAHL, ProQuest, EBSCOhost, Web of Science, Science Direct, the Cochrane database of systematic reviews, the WHO library database, British Development Library, LILACS, World Bank (East Asia) and the Asian Development Bank were searched (from Jan 1980 to Dec 2011) to identify potentially relevant articles using keywords to reflect i) disease terms, ii) intervention terms and iii) countries of interest. Only studies that met the inclusion criteria of randomised controlled trials, controlled before-after trials or interrupted time series were included. Standardised tools from the Joanna Briggs Institute were used for critical appraisal of study quality and data extraction.Results: The majority of included studies focused on control of dengue or rabies, with less evidence available for Nipah virus and avian influenza. Most studies were controlled before-after trials and all had methodological weaknesses which could potentially bias findings. When grouped by infection, studies varied widely with respect to the intervention evaluated and target groups. A range of outcome measurements were used, with most studies reporting intermediate outcomes such as impact on larval indices or hygiene knowledge scores rather than final outcomes such as cases of infection.Conclusion: Community-based disease control programs either in isolation or in combination with other activities appear to be effective in improving intermediate outcomes such as a reduction in larval indices or improvements in hygiene practices; but evidence that they are able to reduce incidence of infection is more limited. Studies that did show a reduction in incidence of infection used a coordinated multi-sectoral approach which was believed to have contributed to the success of the intervention.

Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) are common during the first two years of life, when infants and young children experience six to eight ARIs annually. In this age group, ARIs are the most commonly managed problems in general practice. Between 3 and 6% of infants are hospitalised in their first year of life with a severe ARI illness. Information about the epidemiology of ARI in children is based on historic communitybased studies, cohorts of hospitalised patients, emergency department or primary healthcare presentations, and more recently from birth cohort studies principally involving children at high-risk of asthma. However, these studies do not completely identify the burden of mild-to-moderate ARIs in the community. Recent community-based cohort studies have used sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays. However, they have had one or more methodological limitations, including subject selection, length of study, non-representative sample populations, variable sampling frequency, and the lack of a control population. Furthermore, frequent detection of respiratory viruses in asymptomatic individuals questions their clinical and public health significance. Studies reporting the causal Publications during candidature Sarna M, Ware RS, Sloots TP, Nissen MD, Grimwood K, Lambert SB. The burden of community-managed acute respiratory infections in the first 2-years of life. Pediatric