Abstract
This series evaluates the effectiveness of community-based interventions (CBIs) to prevent and control infectious diseases of poverty (IDoP). Evidence from our reviews suggests that CBIs and school-based delivery platforms are effective in averting risk behaviors and reducing the disease burden. Co-implementation of interventions through existing community-based programs including immunization campaigns, antenatal care and maternal and child health programs have the potential to scale-up interventions for IDoP. Future research should focus on the process of developing and implementing efficient community-based programs through a comprehensive approach, and to gauge the effectiveness of various existing delivery models in order to improve morbidity and mortality outcomes.
Highlights
This series evaluates the effectiveness of community-based interventions (CBIs) to prevent and control infectious diseases of poverty (IDoP)
Apart from the ‘big three’ infections—tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and HIV/AIDS—IDoP comprise a set of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) [2]
TB Findings suggest that CBIs for TB prevention and case detection can significantly improve TB detection
Summary
Infectious diseases of poverty are the most common infections of the poorest billion people, causing chronic, debilitating, disabling, and disfiguring effects that tend to occur in poor settings, and to exacerbate poverty and to destabilize communities. Progress has been made, the current financial resources and global political commitments are insufficient to reach the World Health Assembly’s ambitious goals. Increased efforts are needed to expand global coverage. Community delivery platforms offer a unique opportunity to reach the vulnerable and inaccessible groups implementation plans should be devised to manage programs with similar delivery strategies through the same platform. There is a need for more rigorous evidence to assess the processes of implementing these strategies. Future studies should directly evaluate the impact of such strategies on morbidity and mortality outcomes, which will help measure their true potential. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no financial or non-financial competing interests. Authors’ contribution All authors contributed to the draft. ZAB approved the final version of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript
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