Malaria transmission pattern resilience to climatic variability is mediated by insecticide-treated nets

Abstract

Background: Malaria is an important public-health problem in the archipelago of Vanuatu and climate has been hypothesized as important influence on transmission risk. Beginning in 1988, a major intervention using insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) was implemented in the country in an attempt to reduce Plasmodium transmission. To date, no study has addressed the impact of ITN intervention in Vanuatu, how it may have modified the burden of disease, and whether there were any changes in malaria incidence that might be related to climatic drivers.

N-player mosquito net game: Individual and social rationality in the misuse of insecticide-treated nets

“…We compared this distribution of Nash equilibria with that derived from the power functional form (see also Section 3.1). Within the parameter region spanned by 2], and N = 100, the following inequalities…”

“…Note that lower values of α 1 and α 2 mean stronger individual and community effects, respectively. The individual effect decreases the infection probability for each player with strategy T by physically protecting it from mosquito bites [11,6,2]. On the contrary, the community effect decreases every player's infection probability regardless of strategy.…”

“…ITN use was especially effective for protection of children under five years old who are vulnerable to malaria [11]. In Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean, the number of malaria cases was reduced by at least 50% when at most 20% of the population at risk was covered by ITNs [2].…”

The effects of climate variability and the color of weather time series on agricultural diseases and pests, and on decisions for their management

“…Scherm and van Bruggen (1994) have previously shown how increasing amplitude in a weather variable such as temperature, compared to a constant temperature, can result in a substantially different pathogen growth response. Models of human diseases have also evaluated the effect of weather variability (Chaves et al, 2008;Dobson, 2009;Pascual et al, 2008a; in press -10 Pascual et al, 2008b). Here we design a generic model of disease/pest responses to weather variability to address related fundamental questions about the role of variability and extremes in disease/pest management scenarios.…”

Climate Change and Highland Malaria: Fresh Air for a Hot Debate

“…• Surveys on knowledge, attitudes, and practices to assess the understanding of malaria biology by affected communities, and to understand how decisions are made in regard to choices for treatment or bednet use (e.g., Yasuoka et al 2006a,b) • More research on the use of social marketing and traditional trading strategies for drug and bednet distribution (e.g., Mathanga and Bowie 2007) (Chaves et al 2008b). …”