Comparison of mosquito control programs in seven urban sites in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas

Abstract

Mosquito control programs at seven urban sites in Kenya, Egypt, Israel, Costa Rica, and Trinidad are described and compared. Site-specific urban and disease characteristics, organizational diagrams, and strengths, weaknesses, obstacles and threats (SWOT) analysis tools are used to provide a descriptive assessment of each mosquito control program, and provide a comparison of the factors affecting mosquito abatement. The information for SWOT analysis is collected from surveys, focus group discussions, and personal communication. SWOT analysis identified various issues affecting the efficiency and sustainability of mosquito control operations. The main outcome of our work was the description and comparison of mosquito control operations within the context of each study site's biological, social, political, management, and economic conditions. The issues identified in this study ranged from lack of inter-sector collaboration to operational issues of mosquito control efforts. A lack of sustainable funding for mosquito control was a common problem for most sites. Many unique problems were also identified, which included lack of mosquito surveillance, lack of law enforcement, and negative consequences of human behavior. Identifying common virtues and shortcomings of mosquito control operations is useful in identifying "best practices" for mosquito control operations, thus leading to better control of mosquito biting and mosquito-borne disease transmission.

The use of SWOT analysis to explore and prioritize conservation and development strategies for local cattle breeds

“…Overcoming subjectivity with a multi-stakeholder approach To avoid subjectivity in the definition of the system and in the identification of the driving factors, we used a multistakeholder approach, similar to a study by Impoinvil et al (2007). Many times the number of internal and external factors in SWOT analysis is unbalanced (Karppi et al, 2001), biased toward the perspective of the stakeholder implementing the analysis.…”

“…A similar approach has been applied in other studies (Kangas et al, 2003;Impoinvil et al, 2007). The use of ordinal scales enables the comparison of judgments across breeds.…”

“…Its power arises from the simplicity of its use and from the adaptability to wide range of situations (Impoinvil et al, 2007;Vonk et al, 2007;Lee et al, 2009). This adaptability has led to numerous approaches that depend on the aim of the analysis.…”

“…In this respect, two major weaknesses of the analysis have been identified: the subjective identification of the driving factors and the measurement of their relative importance (Hill and Westbrook, 1997). The subjective recognition of factors has been overcome by using a wide range of people in the identification process (Impoinvil et al, 2007;Vonk et al, 2007). Several studies have developed quantitative SWOT analyses to assess the importance of the driving factors.…”

“…Several studies have developed quantitative SWOT analyses to assess the importance of the driving factors. Various studies have weighted driving factors but without quantifying the resulting strategies (Kurttila et al, 2000;Impoinvil et al, 2007), whereas others have used factor weights in evaluating potential strategies (Yü ksel and Dagdeviren, 2007). Regarding the quantification method, some studies have developed techniques on the basis of a cardinal scale.…”