Abstract
BackgroundThe rapid expansion of dengue, Zika and chikungunya with large scale outbreaks are an increasing public health concern in many countries. Additionally, the recent coronavirus pandemic urged the need to get connected for fast information transfer and exchange. As response, health programmes have -among other interventions- incorporated digital tools such as mobile phones for supporting the control and prevention of infectious diseases. However, little is known about the benefits of mobile phone technology in terms of input, process and outcome dimensions. The purpose of this scoping review is to analyse the evidence of the use of mobile phones as an intervention tool regarding the performance, acceptance, usability, feasibility, cost and effectiveness in dengue, Zika and chikungunya control programmes.MethodsWe conducted a scoping review of studies and reports by systematically searching: i) electronic databases (PubMed, PLOS ONE, PLOS Neglected Tropical Disease, LILACS, WHOLIS, ScienceDirect and Google scholar), ii) grey literature, using Google web and iii) documents in the list of references of the selected papers. Selected studies were categorized using a pre-determined data extraction form. Finally, a narrative summary of the evidence related to general characteristics of available mobile health tools and outcomes was produced.ResultsThe systematic literature search identified 1289 records, 32 of which met the inclusion criteria and 4 records from the reference lists. A total of 36 studies were included coming from twenty different countries. Five mobile phone services were identified in this review: mobile applications (n = 18), short message services (n=7), camera phone (n = 6), mobile phone tracking data (n = 4), and simple mobile communication (n = 1). Mobile phones were used for surveillance, prevention, diagnosis, and communication demonstrating good performance, acceptance and usability by users, as well as feasibility of mobile phone under real life conditions and effectiveness in terms of contributing to a reduction of vectors/ disease and improving users-oriented behaviour changes. It can be concluded that there are benefits for using mobile phones in the fight against arboviral diseases as well as other epidemic diseases. Further studies particularly on acceptance, cost and effectiveness at scale are recommended.
Highlights
The rapid expansion of dengue, Zika and chikungunya with large scale outbreaks are an increasing public health concern in many countries
Emerging or re-emerging viral diseases such as the most recent coronavirus causing Covid-19 disease or arboviruses transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes causing diseases such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever, represent a significant public health threat in tropical and sub-tropical countries [1]
Dengue continues to be the most prevalent arbovirus disease, with estimates of up to 400 million infections and around 20,000 deaths per year [3, 4]. An indication of this concern was the World health Organization (WHO) declaring the increase of microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome caused by Zika, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern [5]
Summary
The rapid expansion of dengue, Zika and chikungunya with large scale outbreaks are an increasing public health concern in many countries. Little is known about the benefits of mobile phone technology in terms of input, process and outcome dimensions The purpose of this scoping review is to analyse the evidence of the use of mobile phones as an intervention tool regarding the performance, acceptance, usability, feasibility, cost and effectiveness in dengue, Zika and chikungunya control programmes. Dengue continues to be the most prevalent arbovirus disease, with estimates of up to 400 million infections and around 20,000 deaths per year [3, 4] An indication of this concern was the WHO declaring the increase of microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome caused by Zika, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern [5]. Their high adaptability to urban communities favoured by numerous larval habitats (water containers) [7,8,9,10], the abundance of human hosts, climate change and socio-environmental drivers have contributed to the geographical expansion of vector populations [11,12,13]
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