Chagas disease diagnosis and treatment -- A reality in Santa María Tonameca Municipality, Oaxaca State, Mexico. The 43,000 inhabitants in San Pedro Pochutla and Mazunte towns now have access to medical care for Chagas in primary healthcare facilities.
Implementing an information and surveillance system of Chagas disease
WHO is also focusing on a global world information and surveillance system to control Chagas disease. Surveillance is a key intervention to break the epidemiological silence (in different times and geographical spaces) of a ‘silent and silenced’ disease.
The global information and surveillance system created by WHO is an open-source system used to collect available information on Chagas disease from different sources (official documents, WHO Event Management System, medicine distribution system, and the WHO pharmacovigilance system in collaboration with the Uppsala Monitoring Centre, among others), detects possible epidemiological silences (in time and space) and facilitates: (i) access to disease statistics and dashboard elements; (ii) monitoring and guidance about the control and elimination of the disease; and (iii) verification processes to sustain the achievements.
Surveillance and control programmes need to be able to adapt to the new epidemiological scenarios. For example, surveillance will continue to be important to detect the emergence of disease in areas previously considered free of transmission of T. cruzi infection, such as the Amazon basin, where transmission would involve wildlife rather than domestic vectors and may include local microepidemics of orally transmitted infection that demand innovative methods of surveillance, prevention and detection, such as the detection of haemoparasites (malaria, filariasis and T. cruzi) in blood films collected for malaria control.
The world information and surveillance system helps to monitor and sustain achievements and ensure that territories stay free of transmission and to detect any potential reemergence of disease foci in regions where control had been in progress, particularly in challenging areas.
The system for distributing medicine is combined with that for information and surveillance in order to determine the distribution of cases and active transmission routes; information about the disease is provided to those who receive medication. Distribution not only supports the delivery of health care interventions beyond the antiparasitic treatment but also improves the rational use of these medicines by providing opportunities for pharmacovigilance and operational research.
A specific challenge WHO is faced with is strengthening national information and surveillance systems and global epidemiological surveillance and effective verification of advances in control and elimination.
Read more on The WHO Information System to Control and Eliminate NTDs ( WISCENTD)
