International Seminar on Integrated Water-Related Disease Control

Health problems related to water cause significant human suffering to millions of people globally. Water-related diseases, such as diarrheas, dengue, malaria, schistosomiasis may be causally related. For example, diarrheal diseases may be caused by consum ption of fecally contaminated drinking water from household water containers, in which also dengue vector mosquitoes breed. Thus, poor water collection and storage practices may be common denominators for dengue and diarrheal diseases. By addressing such common denominators through integrated control strategies, interventions for mitigating multiple diseases may be possible in cost-efficient ways. However, knowledge and experience of such integrated control strategies are limited. We will organize an inte rnational seminar to gather experts and stakeholders to discuss integrated water-related disease control in general, and dengue and diarrhea control in particular. We will present final results from the Healthy Schools project (Colombia 2010-2013) and rel ated dengue/diarrhea risk factor relationships in Southeast Asia. In the Healthy Schools project we have applied a highly novel application of integrated disease control which will be discussed regarding the potential for further upscaling. We will bring together current international knowledge, experience, and expertise in the field, identify knowledge gaps and novel integration opportunities, and identify specific topics of importance for further research. The aim of the seminar is to evaluate options a nd potential for integrated control of water-related diseases. Among the outputs will be a viewpoint to be published in an international journal; meeting abstracts; and a website. A general research agenda will be developed and an international team creat ed to draft a research project. We seek co-funding from the GLOBVAC program for support for events in relation to the thematic areas "Prevention and treatment of communicable diseases" and "Implementation research".