Victor J Del Rio Vilas

Victor J Del Rio Vilas
Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) | PAHO

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71
Publications
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Publications

Publications (71)
Article
Full-text available
The successful prevention, control, and elimination of dog-mediated rabies is challenging due to insufficient resource availability and inadequate placement. An integrated dog bite case management (IBCM) system plus dog vaccination can help address these challenges. Based on data from the IBCM system in Haiti, we conducted a cost-effectiveness eval...
Chapter
Like most human endeavors, rabies prevention and control presents technical and organizational challenges. Here we focus on the latter and describe several behaviors prevalent in goal setting, program planning and monitoring. The challenges and program priorities have not changed dramatically since the first meeting of rabies program managers in th...
Article
Full-text available
Echinococcosis is a zoonotic disease relevant to public health in many countries, on all continents except Antarctica. The objective of the study is to describe the registered cases and mortality from echinococcosis in Brazil, from 1995 to 2016. The records of two national databases, the Hospital Information System (HIS) and the Mortality Informati...
Article
Full-text available
The COVID-19 pandemic exemplifies a One Health issue at the intersection of human, animal, and environmental health that requires collaboration across sectors to manage it successfully. The global One Health community includes professionals working in many different fields including human medicine, veterinary medicine, public health, ecosystem heal...
Article
Full-text available
The analysis of zoonotic disease risk requires the consideration of both human and animal geo-referenced disease incidence data. Here we show an application of joint Bayesian analyses to the study of echinococcosis granulosus (EG) in the province of Rio Negro, Argentina. We focus on merging passive and active surveillance data sources of animal and...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: International organizations advocate for the elimination of dog-mediated rabies, but there is only limited guidance on interpreting surveillance data for managing elimination programmes. With the regional programme in Latin America approaching elimination of dog-mediated rabies, we aimed to develop a tool to evaluate the programme’s per...
Article
Multi-criteria assessments are increasingly being employed in the prioritisation of health threats, supporting decision processes related to health risk management. The use of multi-criteria analysis in this context is welcome, as it facilitates the consideration of multiple impacts of health threats, it can encompass the use of expert judgment to...
Article
Full-text available
Research and policy processes in many fields, such as sustainability and health, are increasingly relying on transdisciplinary cooperation among a multitude of governmental, nongovernmental, and private actors from local to global levels. In the absence of hierarchical chains of command, multistakeholder governance may accommodate conflicting or di...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives We contribute a new methodological approach to the ongoing efforts towards evaluating public health surveillance. Specifically, we apply a descriptive framework, grounded in prospect theory (PT), for the evaluation of decisions on disease surveillance deployment. We focus on two attributes of any surveillance system: timeliness, and fals...
Article
Full-text available
Rabies is still one of the deadliest diseases known to exist in the 21st century, and yet it remains irresponsibly neglected and underestimated. In light of this, this paper discusses the principles of governance as they relate to rabies control, using examples of global intersectoral coordination programmes for the control of canine rabies and for...
Article
Full-text available
Through national efforts and regional cooperation under the umbrella of the Regional Program for the Elimination of Rabies, dog and human rabies have decreased significantly in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries over the last three decades. To achieve this decline, LAC countries had to develop national plans, and consolidate capabilities s...
Data
Reported animal aggression per 100,000 population by country GDP. (PDF)
Data
Example of the REDIPRA questionnaire for REDIPRA 2012. (PDF)
Data
De-identified country responses to the REDIPRA survey for 2013–2014. (PDF)
Technical Report
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Hydatidosis, or cystic echinococcosis, is an important zoonotic disease in the Region, since a significant frequency is reported in many countries of the continent, with a diverse burden of presentation, affecting mainly dogs (as a definitive host), cattle, sheep and pigs (intermediate hosts), and particularly human health. At each latitude, its pr...
Article
Full-text available
Cystic echinococcosis (CE) or hydatidosis, a parasitic zoonosis caused by a cestode of the family Taeniidae, species Echinococcus granulosus, is endemic in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. This report presents CE figures for these five countries in 2009 – 2014 and proposes indicators to measure national control programs. Nearly...
Article
Full-text available
Emerging zoonoses with pandemic potential are a stated priority for the global health security agenda, but endemic zoonoses also have a major societal impact in low-resource settings. Although many endemic zoonoses can be treated, timely diagnosis and appropriate clinical management of human cases is often challenging. Preventive ‘One Health’ inter...
Article
Full-text available
Syndromic surveillance has expanded since 2001 in both scope and geographic reach and has benefited from research studies adapted from numerous disciplines. The practice of syndromic surveillance continues to evolve rapidly. The International Society for Disease Surveillance solicited input from its global surveillance network on key research quest...
Article
Full-text available
Objective To provide surveillance tools to support policymakers andpractitioners to identify epidemiological situations and inform theprogressive implementation of rabies elimination programmes.IntroductionGlobal targets for elimination of human rabies mediated by dogshave been set for 2030. In the Americas countries are progressingtowards interrup...
Article
Full-text available
Objective To describe the development of an evaluation framework thatallows quantification of surveillance functions and subsequentaggregation towards an overall score for biosurveillance systemperformance.IntroductionEvaluation and strengthening of biosurveillance systems is acomplex process that involves sequential decision steps, numerousstakeho...
Article
Full-text available
Background In recent years, global public health security has been threatened by zoonotic disease emergence as exemplified by outbreaks of H5N1 and H1N1 influenza, SARS, and most recently Ebola and Zika. Additionally, endemic zoonoses, such as rabies, burden countries year after year, placing demands on limited finances and personnel. To survey the...
Data
Zoonotic diseases survey in English. The survey questionnaire was comprised of 36 single, multiple choice and open-ended questions. (PDF)
Article
Full-text available
In Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, the number of cases of dog-mediated human rabies is at its lowest since the onset of the Regional Program for Rabies Elimination in 1983, a commitment from LAC countries to eliminate dog-mediated rabies coordinated by the Pan American Health Organization. Despite minor setbacks, the decline in the nu...
Article
Full-text available
Objective The primary purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes of surveillance stakeholders from different domains to:-determine whether there is a perceived need for OHS-identify significant surveillance gaps-assess the motivation to change (fill the gaps) A secondary purpose was to gather a group of surveillance stakeholders to identify...
Article
To identify how member countries in the Americas region can strengthen their capacities and manage endemic and emerging zoonoses risks, a 36-question survey was distributed to zoonoses program managers within the Ministries of Agriculture and Health in the Americas by PANAFTOSA (PAHO/WHO). The survey captured information regarding the national zoon...
Article
Full-text available
The Republic of Haiti is one of only several countries in the Western Hemisphere in which canine rabies is still endemic. Estimation methods have predicted that 130 human deaths occur per year, yet existing surveillance mechanisms have detected few of these rabies cases. Likewise, canine rabies surveillance capacity has had only limited capacity, d...
Article
Full-text available
The American region has pledged to eliminate dog-mediated human rabies by 2015. As part of these efforts, we describe the findings of a desk and field mission review of Haiti's rabies situation by the end of 2013. While government officials recognize the importance of dog-mediated rabies control, and the national rabies plan adequately contemplates...
Article
Disease prioritization is motivated by the need to ensure that limited resources are targeted at the most important problems to achieve the greatest benefit in improving and maintaining human and animal health. Studies have prioritized a range of disease types, for example, zoonotic and foodborne diseases, using a range of criteria that describe po...
Article
Full-text available
Mobile applications offer tremendous potential for collecting data for biosurveillance through participatory surveillance and the integration of new and traditional data streams. This panel features epidemiologists, data scientists, and technology partners who will address the full application lifecycle -- from the assessment of the specific demand...
Article
Full-text available
LEISHMANIASIS is a vectorborne, protozoan disease caused by infection with Leishmania species transmitted by infected phlebotomine sandflies. This article focuses on visceral leishmaniasis, which results in the most severe clinical forms of the disease. It also focuses on Latin American and the Caribbean and Europe, where the zoonotic form of visce...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
To understand and set priorities for research and best practices in public health monitoring, a group of ISDS members has developed an online survey to gather input from the ISDS community on the current landscape and prioritization of select technical issues in the field of biosurveillance. Through analysis, the Survey will identify respondents' p...
Article
Full-text available
In 1983 the countries of the Americas, with the technical cooperation of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), pledged to eliminate human rabies transmitted by dogs.1 Since then, countries have made great efforts to eliminate this disease, with notable success, within the framework of the Regional Program of Elimination of Human Rabies. The...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In 1983 the countries of the Americas, with the technical cooperation of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), pledged to eliminate human rabies transmitted by dogs. Since then, countries have made great efforts to eliminate this disease, with notable success. As a result, most part of the Americas has already eliminated the circulation of r...
Poster
Full-text available
In preparation for the XIV meeting of Directors of National Rabies Programmes (REDIPRA) in Lima, Peru, in August 2013, an online questionnaire was developed by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The questionnaire was sent to the Ministries of Health (MoH) and Agriculture (MoA) of 25 countries in the region during the month of July 2013. Q...
Article
Full-text available
The region of the Americas pledged to eliminate dog-transmitted human rabies by 2015. After 30 years of sustained efforts, regional elimination appears possible as dog-mediated human rabies cases are at an all-time low, and a number of countries and territories have already eliminated the disease. In this setting, there is an opportunity to generat...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction There appears to be a growing number of prioritization exercises, for example of diseases, in health related settings (1). The decision process around these exercises involves comparing competing alternatives, i.e. diseases, and irreducible objectives. In addition to the multi-dimensional nature of the problem, the lack of reliable dat...
Article
The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs supports the use of systematic tools for the prioritisation of known and well defined animal diseases to facilitate long and medium term planning of surveillance and disease control activities. The recognition that emerging events were not covered by the existing disease-specific approache...
Article
When analyzing the geographical variations of disease risk, one common problem is data sparseness. In such a setting, we investigate the possibility of using Bayesian shared spatial component models to strengthen inference and correct for any spatially structured sources of bias, when distinct data sources on one or more related diseases are availa...
Article
  The paper discusses population size estimation on the basis of a frequency distribution of zero-truncated counts and is motivated by a study on the geographical distribution of hidden scrapie in Great Britain. Aggregation of scrapie cases is considered at the county level and results in sparse zero-truncated count distributions which make the app...
Article
Several surveillance techniques have been used to quantify the prevalence of both classical and atypical scrapie in British sheep, namely the recording of clinical suspects (RC) and the testing of animals slaughtered at abattoir (AS) or reported as fallen stock (FS). Any estimate of prevalence based on a particular source is likely to have been aff...
Article
We describe the application of Bayesian hierarchical models (BHM) to the analysis of risk of sheep scrapie using data from multiple surveillance sources. More specifically, we analysed data from the test results of three surveillance sources on classical and atypical scrapie in Wales for the period 2002-2006. For each form of scrapie, a BHM was fit...
Article
Wide-scale scrapie surveillance started in 2002 in the EU. As a result, a new form of scrapie was detected which has been referred to as atypical scrapie. Here we present a case-control study conducted on British sheep farms to increase our understanding of the disease and potential risk factors at holding level. Forty case and 120 control holdings...
Article
Movement records are often used to identify animal sample provenance by retracing the movements of individuals. Here we present an alternative method, which uses the same identity tags and movement records as are used to retrace movements, but ignores individual movement paths. The first step uses a simple query to identify the most likely birth ho...
Article
Full-text available
Previous studies suggest that the spatial distribution of classical sheep scrapie in Great Britain is uneven and that certain flock characteristics may be associated with occurrence of the disease. However, the existence of areas of high and low disease-risk may also result from differences in the spatial distribution of environmental characteristi...
Article
Evaluation of surveillance systems is a common practice in the context of human health, but only recently has been applied in the veterinary field. Commonly, a series of attributes are monitored to assess the system. Suboptimal performance of the surveillance in relation to any of these attributes may lead to bias in the surveillance results. The i...
Article
Full-text available
The present paper investigates the question of a suitable basic model for the number of scrapie cases in a holding and applications of this knowledge to the estimation of scrapie-affected holding population sizes and adequacy of control measures within holding. Is the number of scrapie cases proportional to the size of the holding in which case it...
Article
Full-text available
Data from the Compulsory Scrapie Flocks Scheme (CSFS), part of the compulsory eradication measures for the control of scrapie in the EU, have been used to estimate the within-holding prevalence of classical scrapie in Great Britain (GB). Specifically data from one of the testing routes within the CSFS have been used; the initial cull (IC), whereby...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores the spatial distribution of sampling within the active surveillance of sheep scrapie in Great Britain. We investigated the geographic distribution of the birth holdings of sheep sampled for scrapie during 2002 - 2005, including samples taken in abattoir surveys (c. 83,100) and from sheep that died in the field ("fallen stock", c...
Article
Full-text available
Ces dernières années, la modélisation hiérarchique bayésienne a connu un essor considérable en épidémiologie géographique. Les principaux modèles développés sont axés autour de la description spatiale et spatio-temporelle des variations du risque d'une ou plusieurs maladies à partir d'une source de recensement unique des cas. Parallèlement, l'analy...
Article
Estimation of a population size by means of capture-recapture techniques is an important problem occurring in many areas of life and social sciences. We consider the frequencies of frequencies situation, where a count variable is used to summarize how often a unit has been identified in the target population of interest. The distribution of this co...
Article
Full-text available
Estimation of population size with missing zero-class is an important problem that is encountered in epidemiological assessment studies. Fitting a Poisson model to the observed data by the method of maximum likelihood and estimation of the population size based on this fit is an approach that has been widely used for this purpose. In practice, howe...
Article
In this paper, we apply one-list capture-recapture models to estimate the number of scrapie-affected holdings in Great Britain. We applied this technique to the Compulsory Scrapie Flocks Scheme dataset where cases from all the surveillance sources monitoring the presence of scrapie in Great Britain, the abattoir survey, the fallen stock survey and...
Article
Full-text available
The abattoir and the fallen stock surveys constitute the active surveillance component aimed at improving the detection of scrapie across the European Union. Previous studies have suggested the occurrence of significant differences in the operation of the surveys across the EU. In the present study we assessed the standardisation of the surveys thr...
Data
Full-text available
Table 1. Number of animals tested and number of samples positive for atypical scrapie by PrP genotype and year for abattoir surveys in GB, 2002–2006. Table 2. Number of animals tested and number of samples positive for atypical scrapie by PrP genotype and year for fallen stock surveys in GB, 2003–2006. 2 MS Excel tables
Article
None of the current surveillance streams monitoring the presence of scrapie in Great Britain provide a comprehensive and unbiased estimate of the prevalence of the disease at the holding level. Previous work to estimate the under-ascertainment adjusted prevalence of scrapie in Great Britain applied multiple-list capture-recapture methods. The enfor...
Article
Full-text available
So-called atypical scrapie was first identified in Great Britain (GB) in 2002 following the introduction of wide-scale scrapie surveillance. In particular, abattoir and fallen stock surveys have been carried out in GB since 2002, with a total of 147 atypical positives identified by the end of 2006. The results of these surveys provide data with whi...
Article
Full-text available
Following the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis, the European Union has introduced policies for eradicating transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), including scrapie, from large ruminants. However, recent European Union surveillance has identified a novel prion disease, 'atypical' scrapie, substantially different from classica...
Article
Scrapie is a neuro-degenerative disease in small ruminants. A data set of 3113 records of sheep reported to the Scrapie Notifications Database in Great Britain has been studied. Clinical signs were recorded as present/absent in each animal by veterinary officials (VO) and a post-mortem diagnosis was made. In an attempt to detect healthy animals wit...
Article
Full-text available
Two annual surveys, the abattoir and the fallen stock, monitor the presence of scrapie across Europe. A simple comparison between the prevalence estimates in different countries reveals that, in 2003, the abattoir survey appears to detect more scrapie in some countries. This is contrary to evidence suggesting the greater ability of the fallen stock...
Article
Full-text available
Reports of clinical scrapie in Great Britain between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 2002 were reviewed. Scrapie was confirmed in 4142 sheep on 1099 holdings. The cumulative case and holding incidence risks decreased in 2001, probably owing to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, although there were regional variations. Sheep aged between three...
Article
Full-text available
Prion protein (PrP) genotype data from statutory confirmed cases and from three non-case datasets have been used to calculate the odds ratio (or) for the development of clinical scrapie for an individual sheep of a given PrP genotype, compared with one possessing the "wild-type" ARQ/ARQ genotype. Logistic regression has been used to estimate the or...
Article
We applied capture-recapture methodology (CRC) to data from three surveillance sources (statutory notification, abattoir survey (AS) and fallen stock (FS) survey) to estimate the number of holdings infected with scrapie in Great Britain and to assess the sensitivity of the surveillance network. Between January 1, 2002 and March 31, 2003, 144 holdin...

Network

Cited By
    • Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale di Piemonte Liguria e Valle d'Aosta The Veterinary Medical Research Institute for Piedmont, Liguria and the Aosta Valley
    • Kansas State University
    • French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development
    • Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
    • IZS Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Piemonte Liguria e Valle d'Aosta