Summary of the Climate Information for Public Health Training Course: Palisades, New York. June 1-12, 2009

As the world's attention is increasingly focused on the effects of climate change, it is essential to better understand the role that climate plays in community health and disease. Equally important is the need for decisive, coordinated interaction between climate experts and health workers to decide how best to respond to the variations in climate that in part drive the burden of disease in communities of developing countries. The 2009 Summer Institute on Climate Information for Public Health (SI 09) was designed to engage professionals who play a key role in the operational decision-making for climate-sensitive diseases in identifying and evaluating appropriate use of climate information

Climate information for public health : a curriculum for best practices : putting principles to work

The mission of the IRI is to enhance society’s capability to understand, anticipate and manage the impacts of climate in order to improve human welfare and the environment, especially in developing countries. The IRI conducts this mission through strategic and applied research, education, capacity building, and by providing forecasts and information products with an emphasis on practical and verifiable utility and partnership

4th MERIT technical meeting : synthesis report

As established in 2007 and lead by the World Health organization (WHO), the Meningitis Environmental Risk Information Technologies (MERIT) project is a collaborative initiative between the public health, environmental and research communities. MERIT partners work to combine environmental and social, economic and demographic information with public health data to strengthen decisionmaking and preparedness for epidemic meningococcal meningitis in Africa. Conducting such an effort is increasingly important, as both the on-going introduction of the new conjugate vaccine against Neisseria Meningitidis serogroup A (Men A) and some environmental and climate changes are expected to shape the dynamics of meningococcal meningitis in the African Meningitis Belt

Summer Institute on Climate Information for Public Health 2010

Now that the world’s attention is focused on climate variability and climate change adaptation, it is essential, not only for public health communities, but also for planners in central government, to understand the role climate plays in driving disease burden and impacting economic growth. Public health emerges as the final common pathway for all impacts of climate variability and climate change on individuals as well as societies

Training courses on the use of climate information for public health in Madagascar : synthesis report

Training courses by the IRI about the health initiative in Madagascar

Training courses on the use of climate information for public health in Madagascar : synthesis report

Training courses by the IRI about the health initiative in Madagascar

Response thresholds for epidemic meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa following the introduction of MenAfriVac®.

BACKGROUND: Since 2010, countries in the African meningitis belt have been introducing a new serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MenAfriVac(®)) through mass campaigns. With the subsequent decline in meningitis due to Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A (NmA) and relative increase in meningitis due to other serogroups, mainly N. meningitidis serogroup W (NmW), the World Health Organisation (WHO) initiated a review of the incidence thresholds that guide response to meningitis epidemics in the African meningitis belt. METHODS: Meningitis surveillance data from African meningitis belt countries from 2002 to 2013 were used to construct a single NmW dataset. The performance of different weekly attack rates, used as thresholds to initiate vaccination response, on preventing further cases was estimated. The cumulative seasonal attack rate used to define an epidemic was also varied. RESULTS: Considerable variation in effect at different thresholds was observed. In predicting epidemics defined as a seasonal cumulative incidence of 100/10(5) population, an epidemic threshold of 10 cases/10(5) population/week performed well. Based on this same epidemic threshold, with a 6 week interval between crossing the epidemic threshold and population protection from a meningococcal vaccination campaign, an estimated 17 cases per event would be prevented by vaccination. Lowering the threshold increased the number of cases per event potentially prevented, as did shortening the response interval. If the interval was shortened to 4 weeks at the threshold of 10/10(5), the number of cases prevented would increase to 54 per event. CONCLUSIONS: Accelerating time to vaccination could prevent more cases per event than lowering the threshold. Once the meningitis epidemic threshold is crossed, it is of critical importance that vaccination campaigns, where appropriate, are initiated rapidly

Serogroup W Meningitis Outbreak at the Subdistrict Level, Burkina Faso, 2012

In 2012, Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W caused a widespread meningitis epidemic in Burkina Faso. We describe the dynamic of the epidemic at the subdistrict level. Disease detection at this scale allows for a timelier response, which is critical in the new epidemiologic landscape created in Africa by the N. meningitidis A conjugate vaccine