Grand Challenges in Vector-Borne Disease Control Targeting Vectors

The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that the global population is expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and projects growth mainly in global urban populations. The implications of this growth include changes in the urban environment, which will play an important role in public health, especially a significant proportion of global vector-borne tropical infectious diseases. Combined with these predicted developments is climate change and land use changes which will also greatly alter the tropical disease landscape and impact on public and veterinary health systems,especially of low-income countries. These factors will promote increasingly the convergence of humans, animal reservoirs of pathogens, and vector species to perpetuate the cycle of vector-borne diseases (VBDs) especially in the tropics.Indeed 80% of the world’s human population is at risk of one or more VBDs. Currently,approximately 20% of the global tropical infectious disease burden is vector-borne and this accounts for about 1 million human deaths annually, although the mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa is disproportionately higher (1). The major global VBDs and those of focal importance can be caused by pathogens including parasites, viruses and bacteria vectored by mosquitoes (malaria, lymphatic filariasis, yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, Rift Valley fever, West Nile fever, Zika virus disease, Japanese encephalitis); sand flies (leishmaniasis, Sandfly fever); blackflies (Onchocerciasis), fleas (Tungiasis, plague); lice (Typhus, Louse-borne relapsing fever); tsetse flies (human African trypanosomosis); triatome bugs (Chagas disease); ticks (Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, tick-borne encephalitis, Lyme disease, Relapsing fever (borreliosis), Tularemia); aquatic snails (Schistosomiasis)