Modeling the effectiveness of One Health interventions against the zoonotic hookworm Ancylostoma ceylanicum
Abstract
Hookworm disease is a major global public health concern, annually a ecting million of the world's poorest people. The World Health Organization is targeting the elimination of hookworm as a public health problem by using a strategy of mass drug administration (MDA) to at-risk human populations. However, in Southeast Asia and the Pacific the zoonotic hookworm species, Ancylostoma ceylanicum, is endemic in dogs and commonly infects people. This presents a potential impediment to the e ectiveness of MDA that targets only humans. Here, we develop a novel multi-host (dog and human) transmission model of A. ceylanicum and compare the e ectiveness of human-only and "One Health" (human plus dog) MDA strategies under a range of eco-epidemiological assumptions. We show that One Health interventions-targeting both dogs and humans-could suppress prevalence in humans to ≤ % by the end of , even with only modest coverage (-%) of the animal reservoir. With increasing coverage, One Health interventions may even interrupt transmission. We discuss key unresolved questions on the eco-epidemiology of A. ceylanicum, the challenges of delivering MDA to animal reservoirs, and the growing importance of One Health interventions to human public health.
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