World Health Organization, Headquarters, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland.
World Health Organization, Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, Cairo, 11371, Egypt.
Parasit Vectors. 2021 Nov 27;14(1):588. doi: 10.1186/s13071-021-05080-y.
This letter comments on the article "Emergence of the invasive malaria vector Anopheles stephensi in Khartoum State, Central Sudan" published in Parasites and Vectors 2021, 14:511. Here we aim of provide a response to this paper in the broader context of the invasion and spread of An. stephensi in the Horn of Africa, and the required response to it. We agree with the authors that the arrival of this invasive vector in Khartoum State is of high public health concern. Equally concerning, however, we found that the detection of the vector by the authors in 2018 seemingly took 3 years to communicate to the Ministry of Health and World Health Organization (WHO), and was reliant on an academic journal. We consider that this short report sets a poor example of how public health threats should be reported. Suitable communication alternatives to alert public health authorities to such threats have been put in place by the WHO and its Member States, and are well known to at least some of the authors of the short report. We would like to encourage all readers not to follow the example of Ahmed et al. but instead act as responsible public health professionals by drawing on the established reporting mechanisms and escalate potential threats as soon as they are identified.
这封信是对发表在《寄生虫和载体》2021 年第 14 卷第 511 期上的文章“入侵性疟疾病媒按蚊在苏丹中部喀土穆州的出现”的评论。在这里，我们旨在从非洲之角按蚊入侵和传播的更广泛背景下以及对此需要做出的回应来讨论这篇论文。我们同意作者的观点，即这种侵袭性媒介的到来对公共卫生有高度的关注。同样令人担忧的是，我们发现作者在 2018 年发现该媒介，似乎用了 3 年时间才向卫生部和世界卫生组织（世卫组织）报告，而且只能通过学术期刊。我们认为，这份简短报告在如何报告公共卫生威胁方面树立了一个不良的榜样。世卫组织及其成员国已经制定了适当的替代沟通方式来提醒公共卫生当局注意此类威胁，而该报告的至少部分作者至少了解其中一些替代沟通方式。我们希望鼓励所有读者不要效仿艾哈迈德等人的做法，而是要像有责任感的公共卫生专业人员一样，利用既定的报告机制，一旦发现潜在威胁，就立即上报。
