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Identifying individual, household and environmental risk factors for malaria infection on Bioko Island to inform interventionsSince 2004, malaria transmission on Bioko Island has declined significantly as a result of the scaling-up of control interventions. The aim of eliminating malaria from the Island remains elusive, however, underscoring the need to adapt control to the local context. Understanding the factors driving the risk of malaria infection is critical to inform optimal suits of interventions in this adaptive approach.
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A Maximum Entropy Model of the Distribution of Dengue Serotype in MexicoPathogen strain diversity is an important driver of the trajectory of epidemics. The role of bioclimatic factors on the spatial distribution of dengue virus serotypes has, however, not been previously studied. Hence, we developed municipality-scale environmental suitability maps for the four dengue virus serotypes using maximum entropy modeling.
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Patterns and trends of in-hospital mortality due to non-communicable diseases and injuries in Tanzania, 2006–2015Globally, non-communicable diseases (NCD) kill about 40 million people annually, with about three-quarters of the deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries. This study was carried out to determine the patterns, trends, and causes of in-hospital non-communicable disease (NCD) and injury deaths in Tanzania from 2006-2015.
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Spatial distribution of rotavirus immunization coverage in Ethiopia: a geospatial analysis using the Bayesian approachRotavirus causes substantial morbidity and mortality every year, particularly among under-five children. Despite Rotavirus immunization preventing severe diarrheal disease in children, the vaccination coverage remains inadequate in many African countries including Ethiopia.
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Modelling temperature-driven changes in species associations across freshwater communitiesDue to global climate change–induced shifts in species distributions, estimating changes in community composition through the use of Species Distribution Models has become a key management tool. Being able to determine how species associations change along environmental gradients is likely to be pivotal in exploring the magnitude of future changes in species’ distributions.
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Emulator-based Bayesian optimization for efficient multi-objective calibration of an individual-based model of malariaIndividual-based models have become important tools in the global battle against infectious diseases, yet model complexity can make calibration to biological and epidemiological data challenging. We propose using a Bayesian optimization framework employing Gaussian process or machine learning emulator functions to calibrate a complex malaria transmission simulator.
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Spatial codistribution of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in EthiopiaHIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria are the three most important infectious diseases in Ethiopia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the spatial codistribution of these diseases is critical for designing geographically targeted and integrated disease control programmes. This study investigated the spatial overlap and drivers of HIV, TB and malaria prevalence in Ethiopia.
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Data utilisation and factors influencing the performance of the health management information system in TanzaniaHealth Management Information System (HMIS) is a set of data regularly collected at health care facilities to meet the needs of statistics on health services. This study aimed to determine the utilisation of HMIS data and factors influencing the health system's performance at the district and primary health care facility levels in Tanzania.
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Rift Valley fever seropositivity in humans and domestic ruminants and associated risk factors in Sengerema, Ilala, and Rufiji districts, TanzaniaData on Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) prevalence in urban settings and pastoral areas of Tanzania are scarce. We performed a cross-sectional study of RVFV seroprevalence and determinants in humans and animals from Ilala, Rufiji, and Sengerema districts of Tanzania.
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A Journey from Wild to Textbook Data to Reproducibly Refresh the Wages Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth DatabaseTextbook data is essential for teaching statistics and data science methods because it is clean, allowing the instructor to focus on methodology. Ideally textbook datasets are refreshed regularly, especially when they are subsets taken from an ongoing data collection.