Modeling the relative role of human mobility, land-use and climate factors on dengue outbreak emergence in Sri Lanka
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Modeling the relative role of human mobility, land-use and climate factors on dengue outbreak emergence in Sri Lanka Ying Zhang1,2, Jefferson Riera3, Kayla Ostrow1, Sauleh Siddiqui4, Harendra de Silva5, Sahotra Sarkar6, Lakkumar Fernando7 and Lauren Gardner1*
Abstract Background: More than 80,000 dengue cases including 215 deaths were reported nationally in less than 7 months between 2016 and 2017, a fourfold increase in the number of reported cases compared to the average number over 2010–2016. The region of Negombo, located in the Western province, experienced the greatest number of dengue cases in the country and is the focus area of our study, where we aim to capture the spatial-temporal dynamics of dengue transmission. Methods: We present a statistical modeling framework to evaluate the spatial-temporal dynamics of the 2016–2017 dengue outbreak in the Negombo region of Sri Lanka as a function of human mobility, land-use, and climate patterns. The analysis was conducted at a 1 km × 1 km spatial resolution and a weekly temporal resolution. Results: Our results indicate human mobility to be a stronger indicator for local outbreak clusters than land-use or climate variables. The minimum daily temperature was identified as the most influential climate variable on dengue cases in the region; while among the set of land-use patterns considered, urban areas were found to be most prone to dengue outbreak, followed by areas with stagnant water and then coastal areas. The results are shown to be robust across spatial resolutions. Conclusions: Our study highlights the potential value of using travel data to target vector control within a region. In addition to illustrating the relative relationship between various potential risk factors for dengue outbreaks, the results of our study can be used to inform where and when new cases of dengue are likely to occur within a region, and thus help more effectively and innovatively, plan for disease surveillance and vector control. Keywords: Dengue, Outbreaks, Risk factors, Human mobility, Climate, Land-use, Spatial-temporal dynamics, Statistical modeling, Sri Lanka
Background Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that infects approximately 390 million people globally every year, particularly in tropical and subtropical countries [1, 2]. In Southeast Asia, dengue has become the leading cause of * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
febrile illness for travelers [3]. The high number of infections combined with the lack, as yet, of a routinely used effective vaccine has made dengue a notorious public health problem [2, 4]. Dengue spreads through the bite of infected Ades mosquitoes, especially Aedes aegypti– the primary vector, with an estimated 15 to 17-day delay between the primary and secondary human infections [5]. Dengue outbreak control is a challenge for policy makers because
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