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. 2018 Sep 3;7(1):95.
doi: 10.1186/s40249-018-0478-4.

Containment measures for emerging and re-emerging vector-borne and other infectious diseases of poverty in urban settings: a scoping review

Laurence Campeau  1 , Stéphanie Degroote  2 , Valery Ridde  1   3 , Mabel Carabali  4 , Kate Zinszer  1
Affiliations

Containment measures for emerging and re-emerging vector-borne and other infectious diseases of poverty in urban settings: a scoping review

Laurence Campeau et al. Infect Dis Poverty. .

Abstract

Background: The emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne and other infectious diseases of poverty pose a threat to the health of populations living in urban and low-income settings. A detailed understanding of intervention strategies, including effectiveness of past outbreak containment, is necessary to improve future practices. The objective was to determine what is known about the effectiveness of containment measures for emerging and re-emerging vector-borne and other infectious diseases of poverty in urban settings and identify research gaps and implications for public health practice.

Main body: We conducted a scoping review and systematically searched peer-reviewed and grey literature published between 2000 and 2016. Different data extraction tools were used for data coding and extraction, and data on implementation process and transferability were extracted from all studies. A quality assessment was conducted for each included study. We screened 205 full-text articles and reports for a total of 31 articles included in the review. The quality of the studies was generally low to moderate. The largest body of evidence concerned control activities for Ebola virus and dengue fever. The majority of interventions (87%) relied on multiple types of measures, which were grouped into four categories: 1) healthcare provision; 2) epidemiological investigation and/or surveillance; 3) environmental or sanitary interventions; and 4) community-based interventions. The quality of the majority of studies (90%) was poor or moderate, and one-third of the studies did not provide a clear description of the outcomes and of the procedures and/or tools used for the intervention.

Conclusions: Our results highlight the difficulty of establishing causation when assessing the effect of containment measures. Studies that extend beyond solely reporting on effectiveness and take into account the complexity of real-world settings are urgently needed. We recommend the allocation of research efforts to the evaluation of the implementation processes of interventions as well as their comprehensive and systematic description using validated checklists.

Keywords: Containment measures; Interventions; Scoping review; Urban health; Vector-borne diseases.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study protocol was approved by the Health Research Ethics Committee of the University of Montreal (No. 16–049-CERES-D).

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA Flowchart
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Quality assessment of studies according to the MMAT
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Percentage of studies reporting elements of description of the intervention according to the TIDieR tool
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Percentage of studies with ASTAIRE elements
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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