Investigating within-village spatial heterogeneity of malaria infection over time on the north-coast of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Parasitology and parasitic infections / International Journal of Infectious Diseases 101(S1) (2021) 419-436 thin blood smear pictures. This tool provides vital size/shape features, such as width, length and the perimeter of the T. cruzi and helps to attain a classification accuracy of 91.06% with the SVM classifier.Conclusion: This work proposes a soft-computing tool to detect, analyze and classify the T. cruzi existing in the thin blood smear microscopic images. This work achieved a classification accuracy of 91.06%, which confirms that the proposed tool has high clinical significance and it can be used for automated diagnosis of T. cruzi.

A review of malaria epidemiology and control in Papua New Guinea 1900 to 2021: Progress made and future directions

“…Transmission patterns of malaria in PNG are diverse, complex and highly heterogeneous, exhibiting spatial variation at small scales (e.g., between and within villages) and between major geographic regions of the country ( 4 , 11 , 20 , 21 ). For example, in 2008/2009, a country-wide malaria survey estimated a national P. falciparum prevalence of 12% but ranging from 0 to 49.7% across surveyed villages ( 10 ).…”

“…Human genetic factors such as red blood cell polymorphisms which cluster in familial groups ( 4 , 26 , 27 ), differences in sporozoite and inoculation rates between villages, and response to control interventions also contribute to this heterogeneity in transmission ( 10 , 28 , 29 ). Individual, household and environmental factors can explain some of the differences in infection risk observed within villages ( 21 ).…”