Journal of Travel Medicine

BackgroundThe dynamics of HIV and ZIKV coinfection among pregnant women remain understudied, and its impacts on neonatal health still need to be defined. This gap is particularly concerning given the significant public health risks it can cause, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the Zika virus is still circulating. MethodsWe conducted a transversal ecological study using aggregated data from 2015 to 2023. To do so, we developed a compartmental model that included a Susceptibl...

World Health Organization recommendations to reduce road deaths were examined to assess the potential reductions that could be realized in countries that have not adopted them. Data from 72 countries on recommended speeding laws, alcohol laws, and vehicle safety standards were analyzed, controlling statistically for differences in average temperatures and population density per square kilometer. Using regression coefficients, estimates of the reductions that would be realized if each countermeas...

Increasing human mobility and population connectivity have intensified the risks of global pathogen spread, while concurrent shifts in human demographic patterns, ecological factors, and climatic conditions have altered the global landscape of this risk. Genomic surveillance can serve as a critical tool for early detection of emerging pathogen threats; however, challenges remain in deciding where to monitor, in understanding trade-offs among surveillance modalities, and in translating detections...

Reunion island just experienced a massive chikungunya virus outbreak in 2024-2025, with more than 54,000 confirmed cases. This is the second major chikungunya outbreak on the island, following the first one that peaked 20 years ago. It has been assessed that this new outbreak finds its origin in a single introduction event into the island, offering a unique opportunity to exploit viral genomic data to understand the epidemiological and dispersal dynamics of the introduced transmission chain. We ...

BackgroundHealth status influences uptake of COVID-19 vaccination, with vaccinated individuals generally being healthier than their unvaccinated counterparts. However, the extent to which this healthy vaccinee effect biases vaccine effectiveness estimates remains unclear. This study investigated how different levels of the healthy vaccinee effect may impact these estimates. MethodsThree national, matched, retrospective cohort studies were conducted on the population of Qatar from February 5, 20...

BackgroundInjury is one of the leading causes of hospitalization among Canadians and represents a substantial public health burden. However, at the population level, the lifetime risk of injury-related hospitalization is unknown. Estimating the lifetime risk of hospitalization due to injury among Canadians provides an intuitive and policy-relevant metric to inform the development of injury prevention strategies and health system planning. MethodsThis study used the Cumulative Risk Method to est...

BackgroundDengue fever is a major neglected tropical disease with a rapidly rising global burden, and localized outbreaks are increasingly reported in southern subtropical China. Fujian Province, a coastal subtropical region with favorable ecological conditions for Aedes albopictus breeding and frequent cross-border exchanges with dengue-endemic areas, has had continuous local dengue cases for over a decade, raising concerns about the establishment of a stable natural endemic focus. Sustained lo...

BackgroundConcern about long-term health effects of repetitive head impacts in football has increased, but it remains unclear whether position-specific exposure patterns were associated with differential long-term all-cause mortality among elite players across the 20th century. MethodsWe conducted two retrospective cohort studies of elite male professional football players. The World Cup cohort included all players on the team rosters from FIFA World Cup tournaments (1930-1990), and the UEFA Eu...

Monkeypox viral disease has been and continues to be a global public health concern. Currently, there are existing, though minimal measures to manage mpox and any future outbreaks. Relying on data-driven modeling for early detection of mpox and prediction of possible cases and deaths in the presence of an outbreak is thus imperative. The present study forecasted global mpox virus cases and deaths in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America. Three forecasting mod...

BackgroundWhile coal mine fire smoke has been linked to short-term increases in cardiovascular events, there is little evidence on long-term risks. We investigated longer-term risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) following the 2014 Hazelwood coal mine fire in regional Victoria, Australia. MethodsIn this cohort study, combined administrative data on ambulance attendances, emergency department presentations, hospital admissions, and mortality from March 2014 to June 2022, with surve...

This study shows that the quality of the morbidity data is sufficient to allow for meaningful analyses of spatiotemporal dynamics and provides a significant contribution to understanding the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in Switzerland by complementing existing mortality- focused research with a morbidity perspective. Previous studies have examined the spatial patterns of mortality during the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic and associated explanatory factors. However, while mortality reflects the se...

BackgroundThe Intensive care unit (ICU) service is highly limited in sub Saharan Africa countries due to varying of quantities and qualities infrastructures. However, the burden of critical ill patient in low resource countries is higher and possibly increasing with urbanization, developing epidemics and access to hospitals service. The main objective of this study was to assess the outcomes of ICU admission and identify the areas of improvement in critical care. Methodsan institutional based r...

Vector-borne diseases represent a growing public health issue nationwide. Nebraska reports a sustained burden of mosquito-borne diseases and expanding tick-borne disease risk. This study aims to assess trends in vector abundance, vector infection rates, and human vector-borne disease reports using retrospective surveillance data and to examine the relationship between vector factors and human risk across the state. Vector abundance and pathogen infection rates were mapped alongside presence and ...

BackgroundConsanguineous unions are defined as the matrimony between individuals who are blood relatives. Researchers in all over the world worked on this issue and they checked the ratio of prevalence and effects of consanguinity in different regions of world. This research was conducted in the District Faisalabad, upper Punjab. ObjectiveTo find rate of consanguinity, coefficient of inbreeding (F) and its impacts. MethodsThe data was collected from six tehsils of District Faisalabad by interv...

Cervical cancer remains a significant cause of mortality and economic burden, particularly in developing countries with low rates of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination and screening. To address this, we present a mathematical model for controlling cervical cancer by integrating strategic HPV vaccination, screening and treatment. The population is divided into seven compartment: susceptible, vaccinated, infected with HPV, screened, cervical cancer, under treatment, and recovered. The models w...

BackgroundSmoking is a significant global public health challenge, strongly associated with the rise of noncommunicable diseases and preventable deaths, particularly in conflict zones like Gaza. AimTo compare the different types of dry eye disease between smokers and non-smokers. MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 426 participants. Using a proportional stratified sampling approach, 80 participants were identified as smokers, which began in March 2022. An age- and gender-matched control...

We evaluated the probability of need for public health action against trachoma in Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. Compared to global references, seroconversion rates to Chlamydia trachomatis Pgp3 in children suggest high probability of action needed in rural villages (91%) and lower in more urban areas (32%), motivating further trachoma assessment.

ObjectiveTo estimate dengue virus (DENV) seroprevalence and assess parental vaccine perceptions among children in the US Virgin Islands (USVI). MethodsA cross-sectional serosurvey was conducted during April-May 2022 among 372 children aged 8-16 years from 15 schools across USVI. Past DENV infection was determined using a dengue IgG rapid diagnostic test. Data on demographics, dengue knowledge, and vaccine acceptance were collected from parents. Catalytic models estimated annual DENV force of in...

Infectious diseases and chronic diseases are two major fields in epidemiology that have traditionally been studied separately because of their distinct etiologies and modeling methods. Infectious disease data are typically collected at an aggregated level and analyzed using compartmental models, most commonly the susceptible (S), infectious (I), and recovered (R) (SIR) model, whereas chronic disease data are usually collected at the individual level and analyzed using multi-state survival models...

AbstractsO_ST_ABSBackgroundC_ST_ABSAccurate dengue forecasting is vital for public health preparedness. Despite a surge in forecasting approaches, a quantitative ranking of the relative performance and practical utility of dengue forecasting is lacking. MethodsA systematic review and Network Meta-Analysis (NMA) of studies comparing dengue forecasting methods (2014-2024) was conducted. Models were categorised into five groups: Time Series, Deep Learning (DL), Machine Learning (excluding DL), Hyb...