Vector-borne diseases

February 2016

Overview

Key facts

 Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, causing more
than 1 million deaths annually.
 More than 2.5 billion people in over 100 countries are at risk of contracting dengue alone.
 Malaria causes more than 400 000 deaths every year globally, most of them children
under 5 years of age.
 Other diseases such as Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis affect hundreds
of millions of people worldwide.
 Many of these diseases are preventable through informed protective measures.

Main vectors and diseases they transmit

Vectors are living organisms that can transmit infectious diseases between humans or from
animals to humans. Many of these vectors are bloodsucking insects, which ingest disease-
producing microorganisms during a blood meal from an infected host (human or animal) and
later inject it into a new host during their subsequent blood meal.

Mosquitoes are the best known disease vector. Others include ticks, flies, sandflies, fleas,
triatomine bugs and some freshwater aquatic snails.

Mosquitoes

 Aedes
o
Chikungunya
o
Dengue fever
o
Rift Valley fever
o
Yellow fever
o
Zika
 Anopheles
o Malaria
 Culex
o Japanese encephalitis
o Lymphatic filariasis
o West Nile fever
Sandflies

 Leishmaniasis
 Sandfly fever (phelebotomus fever)

Ticks

 Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever

 Lyme disease
 Relapsing fever (borreliosis)
 Rickettsial diseases (spotted fever and Q fever)
 Tick-borne encephalitis
 Tularaemia

Triatomine bugs

 Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis)

Tsetse flies

 Sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis)

Fleas

 Plague (transmitted by fleas from rats to humans)

 Rickettsiosis

Black flies

 Onchocerciasis (river blindness)

Aquatic snails

 Schistosomiasis (bilharziasis)

Vector-borne diseases

Vector-borne diseases are illnesses caused by pathogens and parasites in human populations.
Every year there are more than 1 billion cases and over 1 million deaths from vector-borne
diseases such as malaria, dengue, schistosomiasis, human African trypanosomiasis,
leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and onchocerciasis, globally.

Vector-borne diseases account for over 17% of all infectious diseases.

Distribution of these diseases is determined by a complex dynamic of environmental and social

factors.
Globalization of travel and trade, unplanned urbanization and environmental challenges such as
climate change are having a significant impact on disease transmission in recent years. Some
diseases, such as dengue, chikungunya and West Nile virus, are emerging in countries where
they were previously unknown.

Changes in agricultural practices due to variation in temperature and rainfall can affect the
transmission of vector-borne diseases. Climate information can be used to monitor and predict
distribution and longer-term trends in malaria and other climate-sensitive diseases.

WHO response

WHO responds to vector-borne diseases by:

 providing the best evidence for controlling vectors and protecting people against
infection;
 providing technical support and guidance to countries so that they can effectively manage
cases and outbreaks;
 supporting countries to improve their reporting systems and capture the true burden of the
disease;
 providing training on clinical management, diagnosis and vector control with some of its
collaborating centres throughout the world; and
 developing new tools to combat the vectors and deal with the disease, for example
insecticide products and spraying technologies.

A crucial element in vector-borne diseases is behavioural change. WHO works with partners to
provide education and improve awareness so that people know how to protect themselves and
their communities from mosquitoes, ticks, bugs, flies and other vectors.

For many diseases such as Chagas disease, malaria, schistosomiasis and leishmaniasis, WHO has
initiated control programmes using donated or subsidized medicines.

Access to water and sanitation is a very important factor in disease control and elimination.
WHO works together with many different government sectors to control these diseases.

Vector (epidemiology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mosquito shortly after obtaining blood from a human (note the droplet of blood being expelled as a
surplus). Mosquitos are a vector for several diseases, most notably malaria.

In epidemiology, a disease vector is any agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen
into another living organism;[1][2] most agents regarded as vectors are organisms, such as
intermediate parasites or microbes, but it could be an inanimate medium of infection such as dust
particles.[3]

Contents

 1 Arthropods
 2 Plants and fungi
 3 World Health Organization and vector-borne disease
 4 Vector-borne zoonotic disease and human activity
 5 See also
 6 Notes
 7 References
 8 Bibliography
 9 External links

Arthropods

The deer tick, a vector for Lyme disease pathogens.

Arthropods form a major group of pathogen vectors with mosquitoes, flies, sand flies, lice, fleas,
ticks, and mites transmitting a huge number of pathogens. Many such vectors are
haematophagous, which feed on blood at some or all stages of their lives. When the insects blood
feed, the pathogen enters the blood stream of the host. This can happen in different ways.[4][5]

The Anopheles mosquito, a vector for malaria, filariasis, and various arthropod-borne-viruses
(arboviruses), inserts its delicate mouthpart under the skin and feeds on its host's blood. The
parasites the mosquito carries are usually located in its salivary glands (used by mosquitoes to
anaesthetise the host). Therefore, the parasites are transmitted directly into the host's blood
stream. Pool feeders such as the sand fly and black fly, vectors for pathogens causing
leishmaniasis and onchocerciasis respectively, will chew a well in the host's skin, forming a
small pool of blood from which they feed. Leishmania parasites then infect the host through the
saliva of the sand fly. Onchocerca force their own way out of the insect's head into the pool of
blood.

Triatomine bugs are responsible for the transmission of a trypanosome, Trypanosoma cruzi,
which causes Chagas Disease. The Triatomine bugs defecate during feeding and the excrement
contains the parasites which are accidentally smeared into the open wound by the host
responding to pain and irritation from the bite.

Plants and fungi

Some plants and fungi act as vectors for various pathogens. For example, the big-vein disease of
lettuce was long thought to be caused by a member of the fungal division Chytridiomycota,
namely Olpidium brassicae. Eventually however, the disease was shown to be viral. Later it
transpired that the virus was transmitted by the zoospores of the fungus and also survived in the
resting spores. Since then, many other fungi in the Chytridiomycota have been shown to vector
plant viruses.[6]

Many plant pests that seriously damage important crops depend on other plants, often weeds, to
harbour or vector them; the distinction is not always clear. In the case of Puccinia graminis for
example, Berberis and related genera act as alternate hosts in a cycle of infection of grain.[7]

More directly, when they twine from one plant to another, parasitic plants such as Cuscuta and
Cassytha have been shown to convey phytoplasmal and viral diseases between plants.[8] [6]