Date: August 24, 2020
Location: Online Event

Mosquito infestation indices (breeding site, mosquito abundance, etc.) currently perform poorly in assessing the geographic risk of vector-borne diseases. Finding better measures could have a significant impact on morbidity and mortality from insect-borne diseases that affect millions of people each year.

During our work on designing tools for geographically targeted interventions, we developed a vector index based on vector population dynamics, the intrinsic rate of growth, an index that accounts for population parameters such as fertility rate, density-dependent mortality, and density-independent mortality. We show that the intrinsic growth rate is more robust than the (common) maps of mosquito abundance or occurrence. In addition, the use of the intrinsic growth rate allows the production of dynamic maps that describe the distribution and population dynamics in mosquitoes, adding a new level of information to the classic distribution map of vector-borne diseases.

Our results are promising and for this reason we want to encourage scientific communities (entomologists, epidemiologists, biomathematicians and biostatisticians) and public health managers to analyze the potential use of our methods or similar methods for precision public health, a topic that subscribers on the agenda of major health organizations and funders.

Speaker:
Luigi Sedda – Spatial Epidemiologist – Lancaster University
Dario Brock Ramalho – Undersecretary of Health Surveillance (MG)

Moderator:
João Marques – Department of Biochemistry and Immunology (ICB/UFMG)