This handbook is intended primarily for front-line health care providers who are likely to see children (among other clients) in their day-to-day practice. These may include general practitioners, nurses, midwives, gynaecologists,
paediatricians, mental health professionals, first responders and st...aff in emergency care.
Other professionals who may find it useful include social workers, those working in social welfare institutions, providers of psychosocial support, and those working in child care facilities and the education system.
Further, the content will benefit the work of policy-makers and managers to enable and support provision of clinical care to children experiencing, or who have experienced, child maltreatment.
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La leishmaniasis es una enfermedad tropical desatendida sensible
al clima, trasmitida por la picadura de insectos flebótomos y
se calcula que amenaza a mil millones de personas en todo el mundo.
Esta enfermedad altamente compleja se presenta de varias formas
clínicas, causadas por 20 especies ...del parásito Leishmania.
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More countries eliminate human African trypanosomiasis as a public health problem: Benin and Uganda (gambiense form) and Rwanda (rhodesiense form)
Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness, transmitted by tsetse flies in sub-Saharan Africa, is a life-threatening disease that afflict...s poor rural populations. It is caused by trypanosome parasites of 2 subspecies: Trypanosoma brucei gambiense in West and Central Africa, and T. b. rhodesiense in East Africa.
HAT transmission can be reduced and interrupted by deploying and maintaining capacities for testing people at risk in order to detect and treat cases, and by controlling tsetse populations that are in contact with humans.
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Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT, sleeping sickness) and Animal African Trypanosomiasis (AAT) are neglected tropical diseases generally caused by the same etiological agent, Trypanosoma brucei. Despite important advances in the reduction or disappearance of HAT cases, AAT represents a risky reserv...oir of the infections. There is a strong need to control AAT, as is claimed by the European Commission in a recent document on the reservation of antimicrobials for human use. Control of AAT is considered part of the One Health approach established by the FAO program against African Trypanosomiasis. Under the umbrella of the One Health concepts, in this work, by analyzing the pharmacological properties of the therapeutic options against Trypanosoma brucei spp., we underline the need for clearer and more defined guidelines in the employment of drugs designed for HAT and AAT. Essential requirements are addressed to meet the challenge of drug use and drug resistance development. This approach shall avoid inter-species cross-resistance phenomena and retain drugs therapeutic activity.
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Gambiense human African trypanosomiasis is a deadly infectious disease affecting West and Central Africa, South Sudan and Uganda, and transmitted between humans by tsetse flies. The disease has caused several major epidemics, the latest one in the 1990s. Thanks to recent innovations such as rapid di...agnostic tests for population screening, a single-dose oral treatment and a highly efficient vector control strategy, interruption of transmission of the causative parasite is now within reach. If indeed gHAT has an exclusively human reservoir, this could even result in eradication of the disease. Even if there were an animal reservoir, on the basis of epidemiological data, it plays a limited role. Maintaining adequate postelimination surveillance in known historic foci, using the newly developed tools, should be sufficient to prevent any future resurgence.
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Dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea-worm disease is a parasitic disease caused by the nematode Dracunculus medinensis. The infection is transmitted to humans by drinking water contaminated with the small crustacean copepods (Cyclops) which contain the larvae of D. medinensis. Humans are the princip...al definitive host and Cyclops being the intermediate host. The disease is endemic to the rural and poorer areas of the world and is most common in African countries like Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mali. Efforts are underway towards global eradication of this disease. Due to its rarity in developed countries, this activity describes the interprofessional team's role in the assessment and treatment of patients with this condition.
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Chagas disease (CD) is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, and it is endemic in Central, South America, Mexico and the
South of the United States. It is an important cause of early mortality and morbidity, and it is associated with poverty and stigma. A third of
the cases evolve into chronic... cardiomyopathy and gastrointestinal disease. The infection is transmitted vertically and by blood/organ
donation and can reactivate with immunosuppression. Case identification requires awareness and screening programmes targeting the
population at risk (women in reproductive age, donors, immunocompromised patients). Treatment with benznidazole or nifurtimox is most
effective in the acute phase and prevents progression to chronic phase when given to children. Treating women antenatally reduces but does
not eliminate vertical transmission. Treatment is poorly tolerated, contraindicated during pregnancy, and has little effect modifying the
disease in the chronic phase. Screening is easily performed with serology. Migration has brought the disease outside of the endemic
countries, where the transmission continues vertically and via blood and tissue/organ donations. There are more than 32 million migrants
from Latin America living in non-endemic countries. However, the infection is massively underdiagnosed in this setting due to the lack of
awareness by patients, health authorities and professionals. Blood and tissue donation screening policies have significantly reduced
transmission in endemic countries but are not universally established in the non-endemic setting. Antenatal screening is not commonly
done. Other challenges include difficulties accessing and retaining patients in the healthcare system and lack of specific funding for the
interventions. Any strategy must be accompanied by education and awareness campaigns directed to patients, professionals and policy
makers. The involvement of patients and their communities is central and key for success and must be sought early and actively. This review
proposes strategies to address challenges faced by non-endemic countries
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Today is World Chagas Disease Day. This year’s theme is Finding and reporting every case to defeat Chagas disease.
Despite progress, the global case detection rate for Chagas disease is low (estimated to be around 10%), posing a substantial barrier to accessing treatment and care and in prevent...ing transmission.
Often termed as a “silent and silenced disease”, many people with Trypanosoma cruzi infection (the parasite that causes the disease) develop no symptoms or unspecific mild symptoms. Moreover, many countries with cases lack systems to track the number of affected people and active transmission routes.
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Chagas disease (CD) is a neglected tropical disease, endemic in Latin America, but due to migration and environmental changes it has become a global public health issue.
Chagas disease constitutes a public health problem, and Spain is the non-endemic country with the highest burden of disease outside the Americas. It represents a model for non-endemic countries regarding health policies to control the disease. This study is aimed to generate estimates of the T.cruzi... prevalence and the number of undetected and untreated individuals with the infection in Spain and to compare them with the actual number of cases reported by official sources.
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Little progress has been made since the 1960s and 1970s to widen the therapeutic arsenal against Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative pathogen of Chagas disease, which remains a frustrating and perplexing infectious disease. This chapter focuses on the strategic and operational challenges in the clinica...l drug development of a novel antitrypanosomal agent for Chagas disease. The various elements that contribute to a robust assessment of treatment effect including dose selection, choice of patient population, trial methodology, endpoint measures, and regulatory perspectives are discussed. The learnings herein should serve as resource to help researchers and other stakeholders optimize their clinical development plans and speed delivery of new medicines to patients with Chagas disease.
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This review focusses on the interactions between the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, Trypanosoma cruzi, and its triatomine vector. The flagellate mainly colonizes the intestinal tract of the insect. The effect of triatomines on trypanosomes is indicated by susceptibility and refractoriness phenom...ena that vary according to the combination of the strains. Other effects are apparent in the different regions of the gut. In the stomach, the majority of ingested blood trypomastigotes are killed while the remaining transform to round stages. In the small intestine, these develop into epimastigotes, the main replicative stage. In the rectum, the population density is the highest and is where the infectious stage develops, the metacyclic trypomastigote. In all regions of the gut, starvation and feeding of the triatomine affect T. cruzi. In the small intestine and rectum, starvation reduces the population density and more spheromastigotes develop. In the rectum, feeding after short-term starvation induces metacyclogenesis and after long-term starvation the development of specific cells, containing several nuclei, kinetoplasts and flagella. When considering the effects of T. cruzi on triatomines, the flagellate seems to be of low pathogenicity. However, during stressful periods, which are normal in natural populations, effects occur often on the behaviour, eg, in readiness to approach the host, the period of time before defecation, dispersal and aggregation. In nymphs, the duration of the different instars and the mortality rates increase, but this seems to be induced by repeated infections or blood quality by the feeding on infected hosts. Starvation resistance is often reduced by infection. Longevity and reproduction of adults is reduced, but only after infection with some strains of T. cruzi. Only components of the surface coat of blood trypomastigotes induce an immune reaction. However, this seems to act against gut bacteria and favours the development of T. cruzi.
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This technical report presents the epidemiology of human and animal leishmaniases in the EU and its neighbouring countries and concludes that the disease remains widespread and underreported in many countries of southern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East and that there is a need to improv...e leishmaniasis prevention and control based on robust surveillance in humans, animals, and vectors, and to increase public awareness following a one health approach.
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Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a country known as the 'breadbasket of Europe', is raising fears of a
global food crisis, further exacerbating existing food security challenges worldwide. Much depends on the
response of the international community, including the EU, to a number of rapidly... evolving scenarios.
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As a conflict between two major agricultural powers, the Russia–Ukraine war has various negative socioeconomic impacts that are now being felt internationally and might worsen, notably, for global food security. If the war deepens, the food crisis will worsen, posing a challenge to many countries,... especially those that rely on food imports, such as those in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Simultaneously, the war came at a bad time for global food markets because food prices were already high due to disruptions in the supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, strong global demand, and poor harvests in some countries. Understanding how conflict-related disruptions in global food and fertilizer markets might affect price and availability is critical for understanding the overall impact on global food security. Further, four months into the war, its implications for food security suggest that this review is timely, urgent, and highly needed.
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Considered a neglected tropical disease, Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) is a parasitic infection caused by the nematode roundworm parasite Dracunculus medinensis. It is contracted when people consume water from stagnant sources contaminated with Guinea worm larvae. Inside a human's abdomen, Gu...inea worm larvae mate and female worms mature and grow. After about a year of incubation, the female Guinea worm, one meter long, creates an agonizingly painful lesion on the skin and slowly emerges from the body. Guinea worm sufferers may try to seek relief from the burning sensation caused by the emerging worm and immerse their limbs in water sources, but this contact with water stimulates the emerging worm to release its larvae into the water and begin the cycle of infection all over again.
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About a year after infection, a painful blister forms – 90% of the time on the lower leg – and one or more worms emerge accompanied by a burning sensation. To soothe the burning pain, patients often immerse the infected part of the body in water. The worm(s) then releases thousands of larvae (ba...by worms) into the water. These larvae reach the infective stage after being ingested by tiny crustaceans or copepods, also called water fleas.
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Course information
Yaws is targeted for eradication by WHO in the 2021-2030 NTD Roadmap. It is therefore crucial to know how to identify cases, design and implement activities to eradicate the disease at the community level.
In the context of integration of skin NTDs it is vital to learn to recogn...ize a disease targeted for eradication. At the individual level yaws lesions may mimic other skin diseases. At the community level, it is key to know how to design and implement the total community treatment strategy and monitor its impact. This course aims at providing health workers with the basic knowledge to understand the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, impact, eradication strategy and reporting of yaws.
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Yaws is a chronic skin infection characterized by papillomas (noncancerous lumps) and ulcers. It is caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pertenue, which belongs to the same group of bacteria that causes venereal syphilis.
Yaws forms part of a group of chronic bacterial infections commonly known as the endemic treponematoses. These diseases are caused by spiral bacteria of the genus Treponema, which also includes endemic syphilis (bejel) and pinta. Yaws is the most common of these three infections.