Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, Volume 5, Issue 1

Canine rabies elimination can be achieved through mass vaccination of the dog population, as advocated by the WHO, OIE and FAO under the ‘United Against Rabies’ initiative. Many countries in which canine rabies is endemic are exploring me...

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is an immunoregulatory cytokine that has been extensively characterized in human disease and in mouse models. Its pro-inflammatory functions in mammals includes the retention of tissue macrophages and a un...

An elderly Singaporean male with no travel history was hospitalized for fever and altered mental status. Blood cultures grew Enterococcus faecalis, and given a preceding history of steroid use and peripheral eosinophilia, Strongyloides hyperinfection...

To achieve global elimination of human rabies from dogs by 2030, evidence-based strategies for effective dog vaccination are needed. Current guidelines recommend inclusion of dogs younger than 3 months in mass rabies vaccination campaigns, although a...

In the early 20th century, a series of epidemics across equatorial Africa brought African sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis, HAT) to the attention of the European colonial administrations. This disease presented an exciting challenge f...

Vietnam has been using a levofloxacin-based shorter treatment regimen (STR) for rifampicin resistant/multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (RR/MDR-TB) patients since 2016 on a pilot basis. This regimen lasts for 9–11 months and is provided to RR/MDR...

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage among HIV-infected tuberculosis (HIV-TB) patients has been suboptimal in Myanmar and the reasons are unknown. We aimed to assess the ART uptake among HIV-TB patients in public health facilities of Ayeyawady Regio...

The purified Vero cell rabies vaccine (PVRV; Verorab^®, Sanofi Pasteur) has been used in rabies prevention since 1985. Evolving rabies vaccination trends, including shorter intradermal (ID) regimens with reduced volume, along with WHO recommendati...

Gnathostomiasis is a zoonotic nematode parasite disease, most commonly acquired by eating raw or undercooked fish. Although the disease is well known in parts of Asia and Central and South America, relatively few cases have been reported from Africa....

Zika virus (ZIKV) circulates as two separate lineages, with significant genetic variability between strains. Strain-dependent activity has been reported for dengue virus, herpes simplex virus and influenza. Strain-dependent activity of subject specim...

We report mortality events in a group of 123 common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) captured in México and housed for a rabies vaccine efficacy study in Madison, Wisconsin. Bat mortalities occurred in México and Wisconsin, but rabies c...

Rabies surveillance and control measures vary significantly between Caribbean islands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends certain groups of U.S. travelers to any Caribbean island receive pre-exposure rabies immunizati...

People’s knowledge, attitudes, practices and beliefs (KAPB) pertaining to malaria are generally well described. However, little is known about population knowledge and awareness of insecticide resistance in malaria vectors. The aim of this stud...

Flea-borne typhus, due to Rickettsia typhi and Rickettsia felis, is an infection causing fever, headache, rash, hepatitis, thrombocytopenia, and diverse organ manifestations. Although most cases are self-limited, 26%–28% have complications and...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the major issue posing a serious global health threat. Low- and middle-income countries are likely to be the most affected, both in terms of impact on public health and economic burden. Recent studies highlighted the...

Rabies immune globulin (RIG) is an indispensable component of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) because it provides passive immunity to prevent this otherwise inescapably fatal disease in Category III exposed patients. Even with decades of devel...

Fox rabies has been eliminated from vast areas of West and Central Europe, but cases still occur in the Balkans. Oral vaccination is an effective method for reducing the incidence of the disease in wildlife, but it requires monitoring if bait density...

Early-onset neonatal sepsis (EOS) is a major cause of neonatal death and long-term neurodevelopmental disabilities among survivors. The common pathogens causing EOS are group B streptococcus (GBS) and Escherichia coli. Haemophilus influenzae (H. infl...

The twentieth century ended with human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) epidemics raging across many parts of Africa. Resistance to existing drugs was emerging, and many programs aiming to contain the disease had ground to a halt, given previous success...

Current anti-trypanosomal therapies suffer from problems of longer treatment duration, toxicity and inadequate efficacy, hence there is a need for safer, more efficacious and ‘easy to use’ oral drugs. Previously, we reported the discovery...

Despite the World Health Organization recommending the use of rapid molecular tests for diagnosing tuberculosis (TB), uptake has been limited, partially due to high cartridge costs. Other infectious disease programs pool specimens to save on diagnost...

To improve tuberculosis (TB) care among individuals attending a private tertiary care hospital in Vietnam, an innovative private sector engagement model was implemented from June to December 2018. This included: (i) Active facility-based screening of...

Here, we present first draft genome sequence of the trypanosomatid Herpetomonas muscarum ingenoplastis. This parasite was isolated repeatedly in the black blowfly, Phormia regina, and it forms a phylogenetically distinct clade in the Trypanosomatidae...

We carried out a baseline survey of cattle in Kaberamaido district, in the context of controlling the domestic animal reservoir of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense human African trypanosomiasis (rHAT) towards elimination. Cattle blood was subjected to...

The objectives of this paper are to provide a review of the author’s personal experiences working in culturally diverse environments and to emphasize the importance of recognizing the social determinants of health. While some determinants of he...

The work began with the screening of a library of 700,000 small molecules for inhibitors of Trypanosoma brucei growth (a phenotypic screen). The resulting set of 1035 hit compounds was reviewed by a team of medicinal chemists, leading to the nominati...

Early detection of pediatric eye problems can prevent future vision loss. This study was to estimate the prevalence of common eye problems among infants born in a resource-constrained emergency setting with a broader aim to prevent future vision loss...

Schistosomiasis affects about 240 million people worldwide and Schistosoma mansoni alone affects over 54 million people leaving 400 million at-risk especially in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). About 20 million people are currently suffering from complicat...

In Myanmar from July 2018, as a pilot project in 32 townships, all tuberculosis (TB) patients aged ≥40 years were eligible for diabetes mellitus (DM) screening by random blood sugar (RBS) and all DM patients attending hospitals were eligible for T...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health issue. Upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) are common illnesses during Hajj, for which antibiotics are often inappropriately prescribed. Hajj healthcare workers’ (HCW) knowledge, attitud...

Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT or sleeping sickness) is a life-threatening neglected tropical disease that is endemic in 36 sub-Saharan African countries. Until recently, treatment options were limited and hampered by unsatisfactory efficacy, tox...

The recent approval of fexinidazole for human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) caused by T. b. gambiense enables improved patient management that is pivotal to elimination. Effective in both the early and late stages of the disease, it obviates the need...

The editorial team greatly appreciates the reviewers who have dedicated their considerable time and expertise to the journal’s rigorous editorial process over the past 12 months, regardless of whether the papers are finally published or not [...]

With the incidence of sleeping sickness in decline and genuine progress being made towards the WHO goal of eliminating sleeping sickness as a major public health concern, this is a good moment to evaluate the drugs that ‘got the job done’...

As a neglected zoonotic disease, rabies causes approximately 5.9 × 10⁴ human deaths annually, primarily affecting low- and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa. In those regions, insufficient surveillance is hampering adequate medical int...

The major part of the global burden of dog-mediated rabies falls on Africa and Asia, where still an estimated 60,000 people die of the disease annually. Like in many African countries, dog-mediated rabies is a major public health concern in Namibia,...

African trypanosomiasis has been labelled as a ‘tool-deficient’ disease. This article reflects on the role that Product Development Partnerships (PDPs) have played in delivering new tools and innovations for the control and elimination of...

The clinical presentation of Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) due to Trypanosoma brucei gambiense is well known, but knowledge on long-term sequelae is limited. In the frame of studies conducted between 2004 and 2005 in the Democratic Republic of...

The Northern Territory Top End Health Service, Medical Entomology Section and the City of Darwin council carry out a joint Mosquito Engineering Program targeting the rectification of mosquito breeding sites in the City of Darwin, Northern Territory,...

Over the past decade or two, the teaching of laboratory diagnostic parasitology has been neglected in Australasia, as parasitic infections are relatively uncommon. As a consequence, expertise in medical parasitology is dwindling. A team of internatio...

Prisoners have a higher HIV prevalence and higher rates of attrition from care as compared with the general population. There is no published evidence on this issue from Myanmar. We assessed (1) HIV test uptake, HIV positivity, and enrollment in care...

Melarsoprol administration for the treatment of late-stage human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is associated with the development of an unpredictable and badly characterized encephalopathic syndrome (ES), probably of immune origin, that kills approxi...

While academic literature has paid careful attention to the technological efforts―drugs, tests, and tools for vector control―deployed to eliminate Gambiense Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), the human resources and health systems dimensions of eli...

Until the 1970s, infectious disease training in most medical schools was limited to those diseases common in the area of instruction. Those wishing to explore a more globalised curriculum were encouraged to undertake specialist postgraduate training...

There is no published evidence on contact investigation among multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) patients from Myanmar. We describe the cascade of contact investigation conducted in 27 townships of Myanmar from January 2018 to June 2019 and it...

Screening of household contacts of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a crucial active TB case-finding intervention. Before 2016, this intervention had not been implemented in Myanmar, a country with a high MDR-TB burden. In 2...

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been providing diagnosis and treatment for patients with tuberculosis (TB) via mobile clinics in conflict-affected border areas of Chhattisgarh, India since 2009. The study objectives were to determine...