Population Ecology, Epidemiology, and Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) laid out a roadmap for achieving the control, local elimination or reduction of disease burdens to low levels of ten major Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) by the year 2020, primarily using mass drug treatments. Despite impressive progress made against these NTDs since large-scale treatment programmes began in endemic countries, critical challenges and barriers have emerged that need urgent addressing if the laudable goals set above by the WHO for these NTDs are to be successfully met.

The ecological challenges to control or local elimination primarily includes changes to population dynamics as elimination nears, reflecting a range of factors from critical slowing down, roles of spatial heterogeneities and emergence of “hotspots” in transmission, community connectivity and host/vector movements, effects of changes in host exposure intensity and immunity, impact of asymptomatics, changed biting behaviours of vectors, and possibility of genetic changes in both parasites and vectors to drugs and insecticides. The impact of multiparasitism and cormorbidity effects on parasite response to interventions are other emerging themes.

On the intervention side, key challenges include how best to increase collaboration and integration across strategic health sectors, including sanitation, education and nutrition. A recognized need is also how to design programmes that are sustainable over the long-term.

This Special Issue is dedicated to exploring and discussing these complexities in parasite population ecology, epidemiology and control that arise as control or elimination goals near. Topics may include modelling work highlighting features of transmission regimes as control/elimination nears and system trajectories or responses that may be expected of particular ecologies and pathologies of infection, including population genetics, and approaches to their management; use of spatial technologies and methodologies in disease mapping, clustering and control; systems biology and molecular approaches to investigating the parasite-host interface and for drug discovery; field entomological studies highlighting changed vector ecologies and impacts on interventions; immunological studies of host responses under conditions of interventions; advances in diagnostic tool development suited to investigating population dynamics at near control/elimination stages; epidemiological studies of the impacts of integrated control combining various health-related sectors; the role and outcome of multiparasitism in NTD control; development and application of surveillance systems for decision making; and social science investigations of past or ongoing studies for learning, designing, and implementing sustainable NTD programmes.

Prof. Dr. Edwin Michael
Assist. Prof. Dr. Anuj Mubayi
Guest Editors

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.