Cost-Effectiveness of Chagas Disease Vector Control Strategies in Northwestern Argentina

Despite decreasing rates of prevalence and incidence, Chagas disease remains a serious problem in Latin America, especially for the rural poor. Without vaccines, control and prevention rely mostly on residual spraying of insecticides. Under the aegis of the Southern Cone Initiative, and in agreement with global trends in decentralization of the health systems, in 1992 the Argentinean vector control launched a new vector control program based on community participation. The present study represents the first thorough evaluation of the overall performance of such vector control program and the first comparative assessment of the cost-effectiveness of different vector control strategies in a highly endemic rural area of northwestern Argentina. Supported by results of independent studies, the present work shows that in rural, poor and dispersed areas of the Gran Chaco region, the implementation of a mixed (i.e., vertical attack phase followed by horizontal surveillance) strategy constantly supervised and supported by national or local vector control programs would be the most cost-effective option to interrupt vector-borne transmission of Chagas disease

Truth in a Logic of Formal Inconsistency: How classical can it get?

Weakening classical logic is one of the most popular ways of dealing with semantic paradoxes. Their advocates often claim that such weakening does not affect non-semantic reasoning. Recently, however, Halbach and Horsten (2006) have shown that this is actually not the case for Kripke’s fixed-point theory based on the Strong Kleene evaluation scheme. Feferman’s axiomatization KF in classical logic is much stronger than its paracomplete counterpart PKF⁠, not only in terms of semantic but also in arithmetical content. This paper compares the proof-theoretic strength of an axiomatization of Kripke’s construction based on the paraconsistent evaluation scheme of LP⁠, formulated in classical logic with that of an axiomatization directly formulated in LP⁠, extended with a consistency operator. The ultimate goal is to find out whether paraconsistent solutions to the paradoxes that employ consistency operators fare better in this respect than paracomplete ones