Guest edited by Matt Thomas, Rui-De Xue, Jingwen Wang, Gong Cheng, and Sibao Wang
A thematic series in Infectious Diseases of Poverty.
Causing more than one million deaths per year, with few new drugs or strategies to combat these emerging infectious pathogens, vector-borne diseases (VBDs) such as malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever and others account for 17% of the total morbidity from infectious diseases. The incidence of some VBDs has grown dramatically in recent decades, with about one third of the world population now at risk from Aedes-borne epidemics. This increase is due to global changes and has prompted WHO to state the urgent need for alternative vector control methods in its Global vector control response (GVCR) 2017–2030.
Within this context, one of these alternative technologies is the “Sterile Insect Technique” (SIT) a method of pest control using area-wide releases of sterile males to mate with wild females, which will then not produce offspring. This technique has been successfully implemented in agriculture against numerous insects since about 60 years, with no side effects and environmentally safe impact. A collaboration was established between the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the WHO Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) and the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/ WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) of the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop activities on providing guidance to countries and testing SIT against the Aedes mosquitoes, vectors of arboviral diseases.
As part of these activities, a training workshop on how to evaluate the impact of SIT on diseases was held in Tahiti, French Polynesia, in 2023. Expected outcomes of the workshop included enhanced capacity of the participants to design and deploy SIT testing in their own region/country, with specific competency in sterile mosquito production and release, entomological indicators and epidemiological impacts. Reviews and studies presented at the workshop are presented in this thematic issue.