Publications by authors named "C A Vargas-Ruiz"
Article Synopsis
- Access to medical treatment for fever is crucial to reduce illness and prevent disease spread, especially among children under five.
- The study analyzed treatment-seeking rates for febrile children across 91 countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia over 30 years, finding a steady increase in medical treatment access, particularly in regions with previously low rates.
- Despite improved access, the proportion of children seeking care at public facilities remained largely unchanged, highlighting ongoing gaps in care utilization that need to be addressed for effective health planning and disease control.
No studies have yet examined high-resolution shifts in the spatial patterns of human movement in Australia throughout 2020 and 2021, a period coincident with the repeated enactment and removal of varied governmental restrictions aimed at reducing community transmission of SARS-CoV-2. We compared overlapping timeseries of COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, epidemiological data on cases and vaccination rates, and high-resolution human movement data to characterize population-level responses to the pandemic in Australian cities. We found that restrictions on human movement and/or mandatory business closures reduced the average population-level weekly movement volumes in cities, as measured by aggregated travel time, by almost half.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to far-reaching disruptions to health systems, including preventative and curative services for malaria. The aim of this study was to estimate the magnitude of disruptions in malaria case management in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on malaria burden during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used survey data collected by the World Health Organization, in which individual country stakeholders reported on the extent of disruptions to malaria diagnosis and treatment.
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- - The study creates detailed maps of insecticide-treated net (ITN) coverage in 40 high-burden African countries from 2000 to 2020, addressing a gap in existing malaria intervention data.
- - Key findings reveal that while net usage is high where access exists, nets are often discarded faster than planned, and distributing them becomes harder as coverage rises.
- - The driving factors for these issues include strong cultural messaging about net importance, low durability of the nets, and challenges in distribution and allocation policies.
Malaria transmission in Madagascar is highly heterogeneous, exhibiting spatial, seasonal and long-term trends. Previous efforts to map malaria risk in Madagascar used prevalence data from Malaria Indicator Surveys. These cross-sectional surveys, conducted during the high transmission season most recently in 2013 and 2016, provide nationally representative prevalence data but cover relatively short time frames.
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