Abstract
Mosquito surveillance is a crucial process for understanding the population dynamics of mosquitoes, as well as implementing interventional programs for controlling and preventing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. Environmental surveillance agents who performing routine entomological surveys at properties in areas where mosquito-borne diseases are endemic play a critical role in vector surveillance by searching and destroying mosquito hotspots as well as collate information on locations with increased infestation. Currently, the process of recording information on paper-based forms is time-consuming and painstaking due to manual effort. The introduction of mobile surveillance applications will therefore improve the process of data collection, timely reporting, and field worker performance. Digital-based surveillance is critical in reporting real-time data; indeed, the real-time capture of data with phones could be used for predictive analytical models to predict mosquito population dynamics, enabling early warning detection of hotspots and thus alerting fieldworker agents into immediate action. This paper describes the development of a cross-platform digital system for improving mosquito surveillance in Brazil. It comprises of two components: a dashboard for managers and a mobile application for health agents. The former enables managers to assign properties to health workers who then survey them for mosquitoes and to monitor the progress of inspection visits in real-time. The latter, which is primarily designed as a data collection tool, enables the environmental surveillance agents to act on their assigned tasks of recording the details of the properties at inspections by filling out digital forms built into the mobile application, as well as details relating to mosquito infestation. The system presented in this paper was co-developed with significant input with environmental agents in two Brazilian cities where it is currently being piloted.
Highlights
Mosquito-borne diseases place a huge public health burden on the inhabitants of tropical regions
Mobile applications provide high-quality real-time field data and enhance the coordination and performance of surveillance agents. They represent a promising tool in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases. To assist in this fight, and based on guidelines provided by the local communities in Recife and Campina Grande, we developed a cloud-based system which improves the surveillance of the mosquito by providing timely and geolocated reports regarding the presence and absence of mosquito in properties without colleting any climate data or epidemiological data
Mobile technology has enabled the development of significant intervention tools that can enhance the effectiveness of mosquito control campaigns performed by environmental surveillance agencies by switching from the traditional paper-based system to digital forms
Summary
Mosquito-borne diseases place a huge public health burden on the inhabitants of tropical regions. Mosquito-control surveillance is an essential component of the health interventions initiated by the public health authority to control and prevent the spread of diseases. Environmental surveillance agents play an indispensable role in controlling mosquitoes by identifying and treating infected dwellings. They do this by scheduling routine household visits to make sure homes and backyards have no mosquito hotspots. Despite the success of the agents in mosquito-control surveillance, the traditional paper-based system and the process of transcribing the data onto a computer system is a time-consuming and errorprone undertaking, which potentially yields low-quality data and causes delays in the analysis. Using mobile technology is considered an effective way to support health agents in collecting and reporting data in real time [4]
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