Search results for "EPIDEMICS"
showing 10 items of 44 documents
Venezuela's humanitarian crisis, resurgence of vector-borne diseases, and implications for spillover in the region
2019
In the past 5–10 years, Venezuela has faced a severe economic crisis, precipitated by political instability and declining oil revenue. Public health provision has been affected particularly. In this Review, we assess the impact of Venezuela's health-care crisis on vector-borne diseases, and the spillover into neighbouring countries. Between 2000 and 2015, Venezuela witnessed a 359% increase in malaria cases, followed by a 71% increase in 2017 (411 586 cases) compared with 2016 (240 613). Neighbouring countries, such as Brazil, have reported an escalating trend of imported malaria cases from Venezuela, from 1538 in 2014 to 3129 in 2017. In Venezuela, active Chagas disease transmission has be…
Why is COVID-19 especially impacting the African American population?
2020
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, penetrates human cells through direct binding with ...
Simulations of networked critical infrastructures
2018
Master's thesis Information- and communication technology IKT590 - University of Agder 2018 Critical infrastructure (CI) refers to assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy, such as telecommunication/ICT; energy generation, transmission and distribution; financial sector; etc. CIs are tightly coupled, creating a complex system where failures propagate from a disrupted CI to other CIs, aggravating and prolonging the societal impact through cascading effects. This thesis extends a system dynamic model by Eliza Canzani describing how a failed critical infrastructure that cannot deliver products and services impacts other critical infrastructures, and how a critical…
Los efectos de la adversidad climática y sanitaria sobre la agricultura y la sociedad castellonense del siglo XVIII
2017
El presente artículo recurre a la microhistoria para analizar los archivos municipales de la Plana de Castelló, con el objetivo de obtener nuevas referencias sobre la evolución climática de la fachada mediterránea peninsular durante un periodo cronológico concreto: el siglo XVIII, enclavado en los estadios finales de la Pequeña Edad de Hielo. Con esta finalidad, se abordarán las principales sequías, precipitaciones extremas, plagas y epidemias acontecidas en la Plana de Castelló durante el Setecientos, y aquellos recursos, tanto religiosos como seculares, utilizados para prevenir, primero, y erradicar, después, las adversidades climáticas, biológicas y sanitarias. This paper discusses a mic…
Reflexiones sobre cómo evaluar y mejorar la respuesta a la pandemia de COVID-19
2020
La pandemia de COVID-19 ha afectado de manera particularmente intensa a España, pese a su nivel de desarrollo y la elogiada solidez de su Sistema Nacional de Salud. Para comprender qué ha pasado e identificar cómo mejorar la respuesta creemos imprescindible una evaluación independiente multidisciplinaria de la esfera sanitaria, política y socioeconómica. En este trabajo proponemos objetivos, principios, metodología y dimensiones a evaluar, además de esbozar el tipo de resultados y conclusiones esperadas. Nos inspiramos en los requerimientos formulados por el panel independiente de la Organización Mundial de la Salud y en las experiencias evaluativas en otros países, y detallamos la propuest…
Real-time parameter estimation of Zika outbreaks using model averaging
2017
SUMMARYEarly prediction of the final size of any epidemic and in particular for Zika disease outbreaks can be useful for health authorities in order to plan the response to the outbreak. The Richards model is often been used to estimate epidemiological parameters for arboviral diseases based on the reported cumulative cases in single- and multi-wave outbreaks. However, other non-linear models can also fit the data as well. Typically, one follows the so called post selection estimation procedure, i.e., selects the best fitting model out of the set of candidate models and ignores the model uncertainty in both estimation and inference since these procedures are based on a single model. In this…
Quantifying transmission fitness costs of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.
2021
As multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) continues to spread, investigating the transmission potential of different drug-resistant strains becomes an ever more pressing topic in public health. While phylogenetic and transmission tree inferences provide valuable insight into possible transmission chains, phylodynamic inference combines evolutionary and epidemiological analyses to estimate the parameters of the underlying epidemiological processes, allowing us to describe the overall dynamics of disease spread in the population. In this study, we introduce an approach to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) phylodynamic analysis employing an existing computationally efficient mod…
Exploring relationships between drought and epidemic cholera in Africa using generalised linear models
2021
Abstract Background Temperature and precipitation are known to affect Vibrio cholerae outbreaks. Despite this, the impact of drought on outbreaks has been largely understudied. Africa is both drought and cholera prone and more research is needed in Africa to understand cholera dynamics in relation to drought. Methods Here, we analyse a range of environmental and socioeconomic covariates and fit generalised linear models to publicly available national data, to test for associations with several indices of drought and make cholera outbreak projections to 2070 under three scenarios of global change, reflecting varying trajectories of CO2 emissions, socio-economic development, and population gr…
The Association of H1N1 Pandemic Influenza with Congenital Anomaly Prevalence in Europe
2015
BACKGROUND: In the context of the European Surveillance of Congenital Anomalies (EUROCAT) surveillance response to the 2009 influenza pandemic, we sought to establish whether there was a detectable increase of congenital anomaly prevalence among pregnancies exposed to influenza seasons in general, and whether any increase was greater during the 2009 pandemic than during other seasons.METHODS: We performed an ecologic time series analysis based on 26,967 pregnancies with nonchromosomal congenital anomaly conceived from January 2007 to March 2011, reported by 15 EUROCAT registries. Analysis was performed for EUROCAT-defined anomaly subgroups, divided by whether there was a prior hypothesis of…
Trends of influenza B during the 2010–2016 seasons in 2 regions of north and south Italy: The impact of the vaccine mismatch on influenza immunisatio…
2017
Influenza A and B viruses are responsible for respiratory infections, representing globally seasonal threats to human health. The 2 viral types often co-circulate and influenza B plays an important role in the spread of infection. A 6-year retrospective surveillance study was conducted between 2010 and 2016 in 2 large administrative regions of Italy, located in the north (Liguria) and in the south (Sicily) of the country, to describe the burden and epidemiology of both B/Victoria and B/Yamagata lineages in different healthcare settings. Influenza B viruses were detected in 5 of 6 seasonal outbreaks, exceeding influenza A during the season 2012–2013. Most of influenza B infections were found…