Multicountry study of Aedes aegypti pupal productivity survey methodology - Findings and recommendations
Summary
Dengue fever and the potentially lethal haemorrhagic form of dengue are a fast growing public health problem worldwide (50 million cases with 500 000 manifesting shock and/or haemorrhage each year), and particularly important in the Americas and Asia. The only known strategy for reducing dengue transmission is to reduce the vector population, which is achieved through interventions in domestic and peri-domestic water containers. However, little is known about the efficacy of interventions targeted to specific classes of water-holding container, and there is uncertainty about the best indicators to use for measuring the success of interventions on vector populations.
TDR financed a multicountry study involving nine Latin American, Asian, and African countries, based on the rationale that certain water containers are particularly productive of the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti (L.), and that, therefore, an intervention targeted to these containers would bring vector densities below the threshold for epidemic transmission. This pupal/demographic survey method was described recently.
The objective of this multicountry study was to evaluate the practicality of the survey method and whether it can consistently identify and classify particularly productive classes of container, and so provide guidance on development of targeted control strategies.
This document summarizes the large amount of data created by the nine study teams with the goal of serving as a reference text for other researchers as well as for control programmes which are expected to adopt the targeted intervention technique.