Anthrax causes significant economic loss and human suffering in Bangladesh. A cohesive disease prevention and control strategy is required, but at the current time, there are insufficient data available to inform the development of such a strategy. This project is combining an human case-control study with enhanced surveillance of cases in livestock in order to help to effectively target resources for disease control.
The key organisations involved in this project are the Institute of Public Health Nutrition and the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research within the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry for Family Health and Welfare, and the Department of Livestock Services under the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock. There is also active involvement from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (Bangladesh), Shahid Shourawardy Medical College and the Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University.
This case-control project has completed collection of questionnaire data from the targeted number of 200 people with cutaneous anthrax and 400 control people without anthrax from 10 Upazilla Health Complexes in north-western Bangladesh. View preliminary results.
The livestock surveillance study aims to improve the reporting accuracy of anthrax cases in livestock across north-west Bangladesh by formulating and evaluating an enhanced surveillance program that utilises village volunteers to report suspected cases. View preliminary results.