Integrating contact tracing and whole-genome sequencing to track the elimination of dog-mediated rabies: An observational and genomic study.

Background: Dog-mediated rabies is endemic across Africa causing thousands of human deaths annually. A One Health approach to rabies is advocated, comprising emergency post-exposure vaccination of bite victims and mass dog vaccination to break the transmission cycle. However, the impacts and cost-effectiveness of these components are difficult to disentangle.

A new tent trap for sampling exophagic and endophagic members of the Anopheles gambiae complex.

Background: Mosquito sampling methods are essential for monitoring and evaluating malaria vector control interventions. In urban Dar es Salaam, human landing catch (HLC) is the only method sufficiently sensitive for monitoring malaria-transmitting Anopheles. HLC is labour intensive, cumbersome, hazardous, and requires such intense supervision that is difficulty to sustain on large scales.

Interdependence of domestic malaria prevention measures and mosquito-human interactions in urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Background: Successful malaria vector control depends on understanding behavioural interactions between mosquitoes and humans, which are highly setting-specific and may have characteristic features in urban environments. Here mosquito biting patterns in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania are examined and the protection against exposure to malaria transmission that is afforded to residents by using an insecticide-treated net (ITN) is estimated.

Methods: Mosquito biting activity over the course of the night was estimated by human landing catch in 216 houses and 1,064 residents were interviewed to determine usage of protection measures and the proportion of each hour of the night spent sleeping indoors, awake indoors, and outdoors.