PhD

Many authors have considered Community participation as the mainstay pillar for preventing Dengue. However, it is not clear what kind of participation in the recommended strategy, nor the net results of such intervention on dengue incidence. To analyze the effect upon dengue incidence in an endemic zone of Mexico’s Pacific coast, we performed a Community-based assay using several techniques for people’s mobilization against the proliferation of Aedes aegypti in the city of Colima, Mexico, measuring dengue infection through immunochromatographic tests.
Even when people effectively eliminated mosquito breeding sites, the net dengue transmission measured was not reduced. We do not have a clear explanation about this unexpected phenomenon; however, factors like loose social coherence and high heterogeneity of social values in inhabitants of geographical circumscribed areas somehow impede joint actions’ performance to reduce the contact of Aedes mosquitos with persons. Such social characteristics in Mexican urban zones seem similar in all Latin American regions. In this region, health authorities should implement special community participation focused on familiar groups rather than geographic populations, in conjunction with vertical-type actions, such as periodic extensive spatial fumigations for dengue transmission.