The influence of gender and temephos exposure on community participation in dengue prevention: a compartmental mathematical model

Abstract

Background: The use of temephos, the most common intervention for the chemical control of Aedes aegypti over the last half century, has disappointing results in control of the infection. The footprint of Aedes and the diseases it carries have spread relentlessly despite massive volumes of temephos. Recent advances in community participation show this might be more effective and sustainable for the control of the dengue vector.

Methods: Using data from the Camino Verde cluster randomized controlled trial, a compartmental mathematical model examines the dynamics of dengue infection with different levels of community participation, taking account of gender of respondent and exposure to temephos.

Results: Simulation of dengue endemicity showed community participation affected the basic reproductive number of infected people. The greatest short-term effect, in terms of people infected with the virus, was the combination of temephos intervention and community participation. There was no evidence of a protective effect of temephos 220 days after the onset of the spread of dengue.

Conclusions: Male responses about community participation did not significantly affect modelled numbers of infected people and infectious mosquitoes. Our model suggests that, in the long term, community participation alone may have the best results. Adding temephos to community participation does not improve the effect of community participation alone.

Keywords: Aedes aegypti; Community participation; Compartmental model; Dengue; Temephos.

Fig. 1

Schematic of the vector dengue model with development stages of vectors for each type of container (thc and nthc); dash lines represent infections

Fig. 2

Effectiveness of community participation represented by the reduction of pupae per person index modelled by logistical function. a Overall effectiveness of community participation, b Effectiveness of community participation by gender (solid lines represents women results, dotted lines men)

Fig. 3

Variation of the effective reproduction number R_eff with respect effectiveness of community participation. For Ĉ(t) in t ∈ [0,T], ${\widehat{\gamma }}_{\mathit{thc}}\left(t\right)$ and ${\widehat{\gamma }}_{\mathit{nthc}}\left(t\right)$, with p_F = 0.25, p_M = 0.02, C₀ = 0.001, r = 0.015, ζ = 0.5 and φ = π/2

Fig. 4

Proportions of infected humans and infectious mosquitos for different types of interventions against Aedes aegypti

Fig. 5

Proportions of infected humans and infective mosquitoes with different scenarios of men contribution to community participation