African sleeping sickness could be eliminated say tropical disease experts

While the annual number of new detected cases of African sleeping sickness has been falling since the late 1990s, there could still be a resurgence of the disease unless control efforts are maintained, say tropical disease experts in this week's PLoS Medicine.

Although elimination of the disease is considered feasible, say Pere Simarro (World Health Organization) and colleagues, there is a risk that the disease could suffer the "punishment of success," receiving lower priority by public and private health institutions with the consequent risk of losing the capacity to maintain disease control.

"While waiting for new tools for sleeping sickness control," say the authors, "the greatest challenge for the coming years will be to increase and sustain the current control efforts using existing tools."

Citation: Simarro PP, Jannin J, Cattand P (2008) Eliminating human African trypanosomiasis: Where do we stand and what comes next? PLoS Med 5(2): e55.

PLEASE ADD THE LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050055

PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-05-02-simarro.pdf

CONTACT:
Pere Simarro
World Health Organization
Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases
Geneva, 1211
Switzerland
+41 22.791.1345
+41 22.791.4777 (fax)
SimarroP@who.int

Citation: The PLoS Medicine Editors (2008) The neglected diseases section in PLoS Medicine: Moving beyond tropical infections. PLoS Med 5(2): e59.

PLEASE ADD THE LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050059

PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-05-02-editors.pdf

CONTACT:
The PLoS Medicine editors
medicine_editors@plos.org

Demographic surveillance—the process of monitoring births, deaths, causes of death, and migration in a population over time—is one of the cornerstones of public health research. But the data arising from such surveillance may not be easily accessible to all researchers worldwide. A debate in this week's PLoS Medicine explores the obstacles to sharing such data and how these can be overcome.

An international network of demographic surveillance systems (DSS) now operates in nineteen countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Thirty-eight DSS sites are coordinated by the International Network for the Continuous Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health (INDEPTH). In the PLoS Medicine debate, Daniel Chandramohan (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and colleagues argue that DSS data in the INDEPTH database should be made available to all researchers worldwide, and not just to those within the INDEPTH network who wish to study and publish the data. Basia Zaba (also at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and colleagues, on the other hand, argue that the major obstacles to DSS sites sharing data are technical, managerial, and financial, rather than proprietary concerns about analyzing and publishing the data.

Citation: Chandramohan D, Shibuya K, Setel P, Cairncross S, Lopez AD, et al. (2008) Should data from demographic surveillance systems be made more widely available to researchers? PLoS Med 5(2): e57.

PLEASE ADD THE LINK TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050057

PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-05-02-chandramohan.pdf

CONTACTS:
Daniel Chandramohan
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Infectious and Tropical Diseases
Keppel St
London, WC1
United Kingdom
+ 44 2079272322
daniel.chandramohan@lshtm.ac.uk

Basia Zaba
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Epidemiology and Population Health
London, WC1 3DP
United Kingdom
+44 207 299 4699
+44 299 4637 (fax)
Basia.Zaba@LSHTM.ac.uk

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