Forecasting Vector-Borne Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Vector-borne diseases impose a global burden of over 390 million infections and over USD 9 billion per year. Some vector-borne diseases are gradually emerging in areas that were previously considered disease-free, or re-emerging in areas where they had subsided for decades. Often, outbreaks of these diseases occur out of season, at irregular intervals, and with devastating consequences. In many cases, outbreaks of these diseases overwhelm already overburdened healthcare systems beyond their limit.

There is not a single health system with enough human and economic resources to deal with the needs for prevention and control in all households at risk of vector-borne transmission. In fact, many prevention and control programmes are largely under-funded and under-staffed. Thus, some of the services they provide may not reach the target populations, may arrive late, or simply drop out at some point. Interruptions or delays in prevention activities or control interventions put countries at a higher risk of outbreaks, particularly in areas of high transmission. COVID-19 has strongly affected the delivery of preventative and control activities in multiple regions. Multiple health systems have been forced to reallocate resources from routine comprehensive services to essential healthcare services. With enough advanced notice, governments and public health professionals could plan, monitor, prevent, and respond to outbreaks more efficiently.

This Special Issue aims to advance the field of the forecasting of vector-borne diseases. We aim to synthesize the available state-of-the-art modelling frameworks, and to provide insights into the challenges faced by researchers and public health institutions for making vector-borne forecasting systems operational. Manuscripts are being sought in the following areas: novel disease-modelling approaches for forecasting vector-borne diseases; forecast evaluation frameworks; lessons from the field regarding challenges for implementing operational and sustainable forecasting systems; multi-forecasting-model comparisons; and the integration of novel data types for vector-borne disease forecasting.

Dr. Felipe J. Colón-González
Dr. Yang Liu
Guest Editor

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.

• vector-borne diseases
• forecasting
• early warning
• preparedness
• epidemiology
• outbreaks