Ente J.J. Rood

• Research article

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease in Tanzania affecting over 50% of the population. Current control strategies involve mass drug administration (MDA) campaigns at the district level, which have led to problems of over- and under-treatment in different areas. WHO guidelines have called for more targeted MDA to circumvent these problems, however a scarcity of prevalence […]

• Research article

We conducted a house-to-house survey in the Mundri, Western Equatoria state of South Sudan to investigate the clinical characteristics, risk factors, access to treatment and perceptions about nodding syndrome (NS). In total, 224 NS cases with median age of seizure onset of 10 years were identified. Head nodding only was reported in 50 (22.3%) cases, […]

• Research article

In recent years, researchers and decision-makers have increasing access to granular geographically disaggregated health surveillance and programmatic data to improve and optimize public health policy. 

• Research article

Over the past two decades, there has been a considerable increase in the number of tools to generate, analyse and use data and evidence to support discussion and decision-making by National TB Programmes (NTPs) and their partners. Increasingly, countries are developing more robust national surveillance systems, implementing multiple health surveys, and using data analysis and […]

• Research article

Pakistan’s national tuberculosis control programme is among the many programmes worldwide that value the importance of subnational tuberculosis (TB) burden estimates to support disease control efforts, but do not have reliable estimates.TB Hackathon: Development and Comparison of Five Models to Predict Subnational Tuberculosis Prevalence in Pakistan. Against this backdrop, the Pakistan NTP partnered with KIT […]

The priority-setting process in the context of the Health Pooled Fund (HPF) is challenged by data limitations, minimal stewardship of the Ministry of Health (MoH) and competing interests among donors, HPF management, MoH, local authorities and implementing partners. A study was initiated to analyse the priority-setting occurring at the national and local level of the […]

• Research article

Between September 2020 and March 2021, Mercy Corps piloted hybrid digital (CAPI) and paper-based (PAPI) data collection as part of its tuberculosis active case finding strategy. Data were collected using CAPI and PAPI at 140 TB chest camps in low Internet access areas of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in Pakistan. To assess the feasibility […]

• Research article

In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the Action Framework towards TB elimination in low-incidence countries, and in 2016, the WHO Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) published the Roadmap to implement the tuberculosis action plan for the WHO European Region 2016-2020: Towards ending TB and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. They outline blueprints to carry out the […]

• Research article

Through a nationally representative household survey in Afghanistan, we conducted an operational study in two relatively secure provinces comparing effectiveness of computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) with paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI).

• Article

 In order to effectively combat Tuberculosis, resources to diagnose and treat TB should be allocated effectively to the areas and population that need them. Although a wealth of subnational data on TB is routinely collected to support local planning, it is often underutilized. Therefore, this study uses spatial analytical techniques and profiling to understand and […]

• Research article

Progress towards the World Health Organization’s End TB Strategy is monitored by assessing tuberculosis (TB) incidence, often derived from TB notification, assuming complete case detection and reporting. This assumption is unlikely to hold in many settings, including European Union (EU) countries.

• Research article

Assessing the completeness of TB notification to determine whether national data truly reflects the real TB situation in selected EU Member states.

• Article

Nodding syndrome (NS) is a progressive neurological disease that has been described in several sub-Saharan African counties, but South Sudan is considered the most affected. However, knowledge about the exact burden and the epidemiological risk factors of NS in South Sudan is lacking. Objective To determine the prevalence, distribution and epidemiological risk factors of NS […]

Short Periodical Announcements of Research at KIT This is a short periodical Announcement of Research being done by the Centre of Applied Spatial Epidemiology (Case) team

Global efforts to end the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic by 2030 (SDG3.3) through improved TB case detection and treatment have not been effective to significantly reduce the global burden of the TB epidemic. This study presents an analytical framework to evaluate the use of TB case notification rates (CNR) to monitor and to evaluate TB under-detection […]

Manual This manual is an initiative of the Stop TB partnership, funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and written by the Centre for Applied Spatial Epidemiology (CASE) of KIT Royal Tropical Institute.

• Research article

Nationally representative tuberculosis (TB) prevalence surveys provide invaluable empirical measurements of TB burden but are a massive and complex undertaking. Therefore, methods that capitalize on data from these surveys are both attractive and imperative. The aim of this study was to use existing TB prevalence estimates to develop and validate an ecological predictive statistical model […]

• Research article

An association between onchocerciasis and epilepsy was suspected as early as the 1930’s in Mexico and later reports were published showing clustering of epilepsy in several African onchocerciasis foci. Ecological studies carried out in onchocerciasis endemic areas in West, Central and East Africa found a strong association between the prevalence of onchocerciasis and of epilepsy. […]

• Research article

Leishmania (Viannia) guyanensis is believed to be the principal cause of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in Suriname. This disease is treated with pentamidine isethionate (PI), but treatment failure has increasingly been reported.

• Research article

Leptospirosis is a globally emerging zoonotic disease, associated with various climatic, biotic and abiotic factors. Mapping and quantifying geographical variations in the occurrence of leptospirosis and the surrounding environment offer innovative methods to study disease transmission and to identify associations between the disease and the environment This study aims to investigate geographic variations in leptospirosis […]