A database of geopositioned Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus occurrences.

As a World Health Organization Research and Development Blueprint priority pathogen, there is a need to better understand the geographic distribution of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and its potential to infect mammals and humans. This database documents cases of MERS-CoV globally, with specific attention paid to zoonotic transmission. An initial literature search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus; after screening articles according to the inclusion/exclusion criteria, a total of 208 sources were selected for extraction and geo-positioning. Each MERS-CoV occurrence was assigned one of the following classifications based upon published contextual information: index, unspecified, secondary, mammal, environmental, or imported. In total, this database is comprised of 861 unique geo-positioned MERS-CoV occurrences. The purpose of this article is to share a collated MERS-CoV database and extraction protocol that can be utilized in future mapping efforts for both MERS-CoV and other infectious diseases. More broadly, it may also provide useful data for the development of targeted MERS-CoV surveillance, which would prove invaluable in preventing future zoonotic spillover.

A database of geopositioned onchocerciasis prevalence data.

Onchocerciasis is a neglected tropical disease with numerous symptoms and side effects, and when left untreated can lead to permanent blindness or skin disease. This database is an attempt to combine onchocerciasis prevalence data from peer-reviewed publications into a single open-source dataset. The process followed to extract and format the information has been detailed in this paper. A total of 14,043 unique location, diagnostic, age and sex-specific records from 1975-2017 have been collected, organized and marked for collapse where a single geo-position is shared between multiple records. The locations vary from single villages up to smaller administrative units and onchocerciasis control program-defined foci. This resulting database can be used to by the global health community to advance understanding of the distribution of onchocerciasis infection and disease.

Variation in Childhood Diarrheal Morbidity and Mortality in Africa, 2000-2015.

BACKGROUND: Diarrheal diseases are the third leading cause of disease and death in children younger than 5 years of age in Africa and were responsible for an estimated 30 million cases of severe diarrhea (95% credible interval, 27 million to 33 million) and 330,000 deaths (95% credible interval, 270,000 to 380,000) in 2015. The development of targeted approaches to address this burden has been hampered by a paucity of comprehensive, fine-scale estimates of diarrhea-related disease and death among and within countries. METHODS: We produced annual estimates of the prevalence and incidence of diarrhea and diarrhea-related mortality with high geographic detail (5 km2) across Africa from 2000 through 2015. Estimates were created with the use of Bayesian geostatistical techniques and were calibrated to the results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016. RESULTS: The results revealed geographic inequality with regard to diarrhea risk in Africa. Of the estimated 330,000 childhood deaths that were attributable to diarrhea in 2015, more than 50% occurred in 55 of the 782 first-level administrative subdivisions (e.g., states). In 2015, mortality rates among first-level administrative subdivisions in Nigeria differed by up to a factor of 6. The case fatality rates were highly varied at the national level across Africa, with the highest values observed in Benin, Lesotho, Mali, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings showed concentrated areas of diarrheal disease and diarrhea-related death in countries that had a consistently high burden as well as in countries that had considerable national-level reductions in diarrhea burden. (Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.).

Mapping child growth failure in Africa between 2000 and 2015.

Insufficient growth during childhood is associated with poor health outcomes and an increased risk of death. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight, the core components of child growth failure. Here we show that striking subnational heterogeneity in levels and trends of child growth remains. If current rates of progress are sustained, many areas of Africa will meet the World Health Organization Global Targets 2025 to improve maternal, infant and young child nutrition, but high levels of growth failure will persist across the Sahel. At these rates, much, if not all of the continent will fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target-to end malnutrition by 2030. Geospatial estimates of child growth failure provide a baseline for measuring progress as well as a precision public health platform to target interventions to those populations with the greatest need, in order to reduce health disparities and accelerate progress.