Centro de Investigación de Estudios Avanzados del Maule (CIEAM), Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Postgrado, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca 3480112, Chile.
Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago 7941169, Chile.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 6;19(23):16327. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192316327.
Malaria remains a major health problem in many parts of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa. Insecticide-treated nets, in combination with other control measures, have been effective in reducing malaria incidence over the past two decades. Nevertheless, there are concerns about improper handling and misuse of nets, producing possible health effects from intoxication and collateral environmental damage. The latter is caused, for instance, from artisanal fishing. We formulate a model of impulsive differential equations to describe the interplay between malaria dynamics, human intoxication, and ecosystem damage; affected by human awareness to these risks and levels of net usage. Our results show that an increase in mosquito net coverage reduces malaria prevalence and increases human intoxications. In addition, a high net coverage significantly reduces the risk perception to disease, naturally increases the awareness for intoxications from net handling, and scarcely increases the risk perception to collateral damage from net fishing. According to our model, campaigns aiming at reducing disease prevalence or intoxications are much more successful than those creating awareness to ecosystem damage. Furthermore, we can observe from our results that introducing closed fishing periods reduces environmental damage more significantly than strategies directed towards increasing the risk perception for net fishing.
疟疾仍然是世界上许多地区，包括撒哈拉以南非洲的一个主要健康问题。在过去的二十年中，经杀虫剂处理的蚊帐与其他控制措施相结合，已被证明能有效降低疟疾发病率。然而，人们担心蚊帐处理不当和滥用，可能会导致中毒和附带的环境破坏等健康影响。后者是由手工捕鱼等造成的。我们制定了一个脉冲微分方程模型来描述疟疾动态、人类中毒和生态系统破坏之间的相互作用；受人类对这些风险和蚊帐使用水平的认识的影响。我们的研究结果表明，增加蚊帐覆盖率可以降低疟疾的发病率和增加人类中毒的风险。此外，高蚊帐覆盖率显著降低了对疾病的风险感知，自然增加了对因处理蚊帐而中毒的认识，而对因网捕鱼造成的附带损害的风险感知几乎没有增加。根据我们的模型，旨在降低疾病发病率或中毒率的宣传活动比旨在提高对生态系统破坏的风险意识的宣传活动更成功。此外，我们可以从研究结果中观察到，引入禁渔期比旨在提高对网捕鱼风险意识的策略更能显著减少环境破坏。
