Freedom From Infection – Confirming the interruption of malaria transmission and broader implications for public health

23 février 2021, 12h00-13h00 (HE)

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Good surveillance is the foundation for effective disease control and elimination efforts and should generate timely and actionable information for decision-making. Generating the evidence required to support claims of disease elimination poses a specific challenge in that it involves proving a negative i.e zero infections. Ideally, tools would be available to analyze and interpret data collected within the health system to guide quantitatively driven decision-making, to track progress towards elimination and to estimate absence of transmission with known levels of uncertainty. The freedom from infection (FFI) tools developed for veterinary epidemiology could provide such a framework. This research applies the FFI tools to malaria elimination to determine whether and how the tools can be applied to the context of human health. We show how to quantify the sensitivity of the surveillance system to detect infections, to leverage negative results accumulating over time, and to combine multiple sources of information to support claims for the absence of transmission. We also show that the FFI tools can also provide the flexibility to account for inherent differences across diseases, transmission landscapes and surveillance systems while simultaneously setting a consistent standard of probability of freedom and acceptable levels of certainty, to be achieved.  

Gillian Stresman
Professeure adjointe à London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (Faculté des maladies infectieuses et tropicales)

Gillian Stresman has been working on malaria epidemiology research for more than 10 years and has spent time in multiple malaria-endemic countries including Zambia, Kenya, Philippines and Haiti.

Her focus is on understanding the epidemiological and spatial determinants of malaria transmission with the ultimate goal of accelerating transmission reduction and achieving elimination. This includes studies ranging from understanding bias in routine surveillance due to asymptomatic infections, identifying residual parasite populations to target interventions, understanding the role of spatial transmission dynamics at various spatial-scales, and identify tools and metrics for malaria surveillance that are operationally feasible for implementation in endemic settings. Additional research focuses on malaria elimination in terms of both how to achieve zero as well as how to measure absence of infections.
 

Thomas Druetz
Chercheur au CReSP et professeur adjoint à l’École de santé publique de l’Université de Montréal

Thomas Druetz détient une licence en sciences politiques, une maîtrise (MA) en études internationales et un diplôme d'études supérieures spécialisées (DESS) en santé communautaire. Il a également complété un doctorat (PhD) en santé publique à l’Université de Montréal. Sa thèse a examiné le recours aux agents de santé communautaires pour lutter contre le paludisme au Burkina Faso.

Il a réalisé un stage postdoctoral en épidémiologie du paludisme au Département de médecine tropicale de l'Université Tulane (La Nouvelle-Orléans, USA), avant d'y être nommé Professeur sous octroi. Désormais Professeur à l'École de santé publique de l'Université de Montréal, ses travaux continuent de se centrer sur des problématiques en santé mondiale, avec un intérêt particulier pour l’évaluation des interventions implantées dans des conditions naturelles et visant à améliorer la santé maternelle et infantile dans les pays à faible revenu.