Global Distribution Maps of the Leishmaniases
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- UFR Médecine, Université Montpellier 1 and UMR 'MiVEGEC', CNRS 5290/IRD 224, France
- CHRU de Montpellier, Centre National de Référence des Leishmanioses, France
- Harvard Medical School, United States
- Boston University, United States
- Boston Children's Hospital, United States
- National Institutes of Health, United States
- RTI International, United States
Abstract
The leishmaniases are vector-borne diseases that have a broad global distribution throughout much of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Despite representing a significant public health burden, our understanding of the global distribution of the leishmaniases remains vague, reliant upon expert opinion and limited to poor spatial resolution. A global assessment of the consensus of evidence for leishmaniasis was performed at a sub-national level by aggregating information from a variety of sources. A database of records of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis occurrence was compiled from published literature, online reports, strain archives and GenBank accessions. These, with a suite of biologically relevant environmental covariates, were used in a boosted regression tree modelling framework to generate global environmental risk maps for the leishmaniases. These high-resolution evidence-based maps can help direct future surveillance activities, identify areas to target for disease control and inform future burden estimation efforts.
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