Efficient Control of Vector-Borne Diseases

Vector-borne diseases are responsible for over 700,000 deaths and more than 7M disability-adjusted life years annually. Those affected typically live in resource-limited settings. Therefore, whilst there has been substantial progress in the control of many vector-borne infections, maintaining intervention success is difficult because of competing priorities across healthcare systems. Whilst generally not vaccine-preventable (notable exceptions being yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis), the nature of these infections passing through secondary, non-human hosts provides alternative options for control that are not possible with contagious infections. There is a question of how feasible and effective vector control interventions are for particular diseases and locations and, furthermore, there must be careful allocation of resources between interventions targeting the vector—primarily preventing transmission—and medical interventions, including diagnosis and treatment, much needed by those who become infected.

Dynamic transmission modelling can be used to explore the relative impact of different strategies composed of combinations of interventions. Such analyses can assess progress towards disease control or elimination goals, provide predictions of future disease burden, and explore “what if?” scenarios, which can be helpful in the consideration of emerging new tools or even the scaling back of present interventions. Modelling can factor in resource constraints or health system capacity to conduct strategies, aiding more realistic planning and optimisation of strategies, especially those focused on achieving a goal such as elimination of transmission. To complement this, health economic analyses bring in the additional perspective of a strategy’s economic efficiency—usually through the consideration of cost to alleviate disease burden, affordability, and the broader impact on households’ wellbeing.

This Special Issue aims to bring together collective insights across different vector-borne diseases. We welcome high-quality articles focused on the use of quantitative approaches to assess efficient use of resources to control disease burden or achieve fixed goals, such as elimination as a public health problem or elimination of transmission.

Dr. Kat Rock
Dr. Jennifer Lord
Dr. Fabrizio Tediosi
Dr. Mario Recker
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Transmission model
• Vector-borne disease
• Resource allocation
• Health economic analysis
• Disease burden
• Optimisation
• Intervention planning
• Policy
• Decision analysis
• Elimination