Fifty years of struggle to control cutaneous leishmaniasis in the highest endemic county in Iran: A longitudinal observation inferred with interrupted time series model

by Mohammadreza Aflatoonian, Iraj Sharifi, Behnaz Aflatoonian, Ehsan Salarkia, Ahmad Khosravi, Razieh Tavakoli Oliaee, Mehdi Bamorovat, Abbas Aghaei Afshar, Zahra Babaei, Fatemeh Sharifi, Moslem Taheri Soodejani, Mohammad Reza Shirzadi, Mohammad Mehdi Gouya, Abolhassan Nadim, Hamid Sharifi Negligible data are available following major social activities and environmental changes on leishmaniasis. Therefore, how interactions between these events influence cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) risk is not well-known. This longitudinal study was undertaken to explore the impact of interventions conducted between 1971 and 2020 in Bam county, which has had the highest disease burden in Iran. Only confirmed CL cases during this period were taken into account. Data were analyzed by SPSS 22 using the X2 test to assess the significance of the difference between proportions. Moreover, we used interrupted time series (ITS) to assess the impact of three environmental events during this period. Overall, 40,164 cases of CL occurred in the past five decades. Multiple complex factors were among the leading causes that synergistically induced the emergence/re-emergence of CL outbreaks in Bam. The main factors attributed negatively to CL control were cessation of malaria spraying activity, expansion of the city spaces, and a massive earthquake creating new breeding potentials for the vectors. The highest impact on CL incidence during these years was related to the earthquake [coefficient = 17.8 (95% CI...
Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases - Category: Tropical Medicine Authors: Source Type: research