Approaching schistosomiasis elimination: from mass treatment to targeted interventions.

COR NTD and the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance (GSA) are pleased to announce a pre-meeting session:

"Approaching schistosomiasis elimination: from mass treatment to targeted interventions."

Date: September 18, 2020
Time: 16:00-18:00 EAT (East African Time)

Aim:

The overall aim of this session is to identify operational research needs and questions that can help guide successful schistosomiasis programs from the morbidity control stage towards elimination of schistosomiasis as public health problem and interruption of transmission.

Specifically, in the session, we will hear about and discuss existing and novel tools and strategies needed on the last mile towards interrupting transmission.

Agenda:

Talks (40-60 min):

Sultani Matendechero: The “breaking transmission” strategy for neglected tropical diseases in Kenya (10 min)
Yves-Nathan Tian Bi: Lessons learned from chemical snail control as complementary measure to MDA for interrupting seasonal schistosomiasis transmission in Côte d’Ivoire (10 min)
Federica Giardina: Modelling schistosomiasis elimination for targeted interventions (10 min)
Bonnie Webster: Diagnostic tools we have and need for surveillance of human and snail infections (10 min)

Parallel break-out discussions (30-40 min):

a) Beyond MDA 1: intervention strategies for reaching interruption of schistosomiasis transmission (Chairs: Sultani Matendechero, Nathan Tian-Bi)
b) Beyond MDA 2: modelling for targeted interventions (Chair: Federica Giardina)
c) Beyond routine diagnostics: tools for use in elimination settings (Chair: Bonnie Webster)

Plenary (10-20 min)
Return from break-out groups into main group and report by chairs and rapporteurs of discussion results and key operational research questions identified.
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Speaker Information

Dr. Hadley Matendechero Sultani

Dr. Hadley Matendechero Sultani is a consultant psychiatric pharmacist with a masters’ degree in clinical pharmacy from the University of Nairobi. He currently serves as the Head, Division of Vector Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases in the Kenya Ministry of Health. With encouragement from colleagues and stakeholders, he took up the role of national NTD program pharmacist in January 2014 and rapidly rose through the ranks to the position of national NTD program manager in late 2015. This appointment completed his shift of focus from mental health to NTDs control. His goal is to achieve elimination of at least five NTDs in Kenya by 2025. Dr. Sultani currently serves as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the global Soil-Transmitted Helminthiasis Coalition and the External Advisory Committee of the Scientific Research Partnership for Neglected Tropical Snakebite. He is the current chairman of the Leishmaniasis East Africa Platform Advisory Committee, where his main objective is to establish a common regional strategy towards elimination of Kala Azar.

Dr Tah Yves-Nathan Tian-Bi

Dr Tah Yves-Nathan Tian-Bi is a geneticist. His PhD work focused on genetics and evolutionary biology of the populations of Biomphalaria pfeifferi, the intermediate host of Schistosoma mansoni. Dr Tian-Bi is Associate-Professor at University Félix Houphouët-Boigny where he teaches population genetics and biostatistics. For more than ten years he has been involved in several research projects on schistosomiasis control, one of which combined MDA with praziquantel and chemical snail control for the first time in Côte d'Ivoire. His current research focuses on hybridisation in schistosomes and the impact of this phenomenon the epidemiology of schistosomiasis.

Dr Federica Giardina

Dr Federica Giardina is a mathematical modeller at the Department of Public health at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam (NL). She has worked on a wide range of infectious diseases including malaria, HIV and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD). Federica was recently granted an EU-Horizon 2020 (Marie-Curie actions) project focusing on “understanding schistosomiasis dynamics to STOP transmission” (SchiSTOP). As a member of the NTD Modelling Consortium, Federica also models the transmission dynamics of soil-transmitted helminths to provide insight on the design of treatment programs and to inform policy-related decisions.

Dr Bonnie Webster

Dr Bonnie Webster from the Natural History Museum London has a specific expertise in molecular aspects of schistosomiasis epidemiology, transmission monitoring and diagnosis. Her research focusses on the investigation of the genetic diversity of Schistosoma species, particularly across Africa, producing valuable data of geographical differences in populations, potential zoonotic transmission and snail-schistosome relationships. This supports the development of molecular tools for species identification, xenomonitoring of snail populations to monitor transmission and the development of specific diagnostics. Of specific relevance is her research on the development of robust and simple molecular tools to identify infected snail hosts, as a means to provide tools to determine ongoing transmission or interruption. Additionally, her work on field based molecular diagnostics for urogenital schistosomiasis is aimed at enabling test and treat scenarios to support elimination.

Moderators

Dr Steffi Knopp

Dr Steffi Knopp is an epidemiologist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute with a primary interest in neglected tropical diseases mostly affecting vulnerable population groups in the Global South. Her main areas of research concern the diagnosis, epidemiology and control of helminth infections in Sub-Saharan Africa. Assisting and leading research projects in Africa since 1999, Steffi has a vast experience of working with local teams, project managers and international stakeholders and in implementing large-scale projects, including multidisciplinary operational research studies and randomized clinical trials.

In 2018, Steffi was awarded with a PRIMA grant for excellent female researchers by the Swiss National Science Foundation for a project entitled “The last mile: novel tools and strategies for breaking schistosomiasis transmission”. The project aims to contribute evidence to the feasibility of schistosomiasis elimination, by addressing challenges faced by elimination programs in heterogonous transmission environments.

Dr David Rollinson is Director of the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance. He is a Merit Research Scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, where he leads a research team in the Wolfson Wellcome Biomedical Laboratories and directs a WHO Collaborating Centre for schistosomiasis. He has devoted much time and energy to disease control in the tropics, spanning from the highest levels of WHO and policy to on-the-ground with community health volunteers. David has had a long fascination with schistosomes and their intermediate snail hosts and this has involved him in many overseas projects especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Most recently, he has been leading the Zanzibar Elimination of Schistosomiasis Transmission (ZEST) project in Zanzibar. David is on the WHO Expert Advisory Panel of parasitic diseases, the senior editor of Advances in Parasitology and a former President of the World Federation of Parasitologists and British Society for Parasitology.