Although the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) has been a worldwide success, weak points remain, particularly in Africa. In Senegal, for example, immunization coverage was low in 1990 (60%), in part because of poor results in rural areas. In order to identify obstacles to EPI in such areas, we carried out an immunization survey in Bandafassi, a rural area of Senegal, where 6078 inhabitan...

An isolated area with diarrhoea epidemic was explored at Pakhirala village of the Sundarbans, a coastal region of South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, eastern India. The Pakhirala village was surrounded by other villages affected by a similar epidemic. The affected villages experienced this epidemic following the cyclone Aila, which had hit the coastal region of the Sundarbans in eastern ...

In Guatemala, the Ministry of Health (MoH) began a vector control project with Japanese cooperation in 2000 to reduce the risk of Chagas disease infection. Rhodnius prolixus is one of the principal vectors and is targeted for elimination. The control method consisted of extensive residual insecticide spraying campaigns, followed by community-based surveillance with selective respraying. Interve...

The aim of the study was to know about the availability and utilization of the primary health services in the rural areas of district Peshawar. The study was conducted in the three villages namely, Sufaid Dheri, Sarband, and Masho Khel, during May October, 2006. The selection of the villages was made by choice. However, in the selection of the villages, few points were considered such as the di...

After successful control of the endemic of leprosy in Shandong Province, China, how to deal with ex-leprosy patients living in the leprosy villages/leprosaria has become a hot topic among programme managers, medical staff and governmental officials at different levels. One of the possible solutions in dealing with the problem was proposed to combine small leprosy villages into a few larger, alr...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of construction of microdams on the incidence of malaria in nearby communities in terms of possibly increasing peak incidence and prolonging transmission. DESIGN Four quarterly cycles of malaria incidence surveys, each taking 30 days, undertaken in eight at risk communities close to dams paired with eight control villages at similar altitudes but beyond flight r...

The Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis has made significant progress toward interrupting transmission of lymphatic filariasis (LF) through mass drug administration (MDA). Operational challenges in defining endpoints of elimination programs include the need to determine appropriate post-MDA surveillance strategies. As humans are the only reservoirs of LF parasites, one such strat...

Vector control is a major step in the process of malaria control and elimination. This requires vector counts and appropriate statistical analyses of these counts. However, vector counts are often overdispersed. A non-parametric mixture of Poisson model (NPMP) is proposed to allow for overdispersion and better describe vector distribution. Mosquito collections using the Human Landing Catches as...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Field trials of lambda-cyhalothrin 10 CS (ICON 10 CS) in indoor residual spraying (IRS) with 25 mg a.i./m2 against Anopheles culicifacies was undertaken vs malathion IRS (25% WP-2 g a.i./m2) in Tumkur district, Karnataka; vs deltamethrin IRS (2.5% WP-20 mg a.i./m2) in Dharmapuri district; and vs lambda-cyhalothrin (10 WP-25 mg a.i./m2) in Ramanathapuram district, Tamil N...

From 1998 to 2000, 13 rural Alaskan villages (population, 3326) were surveyed annually by nasopharyngeal cultures for Streptococcus pneumoniae carriage. Data regarding antibiotic use for the entire population was abstracted from clinic records. In 1999, education of medical providers and the community about appropriate antibiotic use began in 4 villages; this program was expanded to include all...