Call for Action!

Due to the government's restriction to access available data on infectious diseases, Venezuela is currently facing a threat of epidemic outbreaks of dengue, and more recently Chaga's disease, specially in the rural and coastal areas of the country.
 
In normal situations, epidemiological data is published openly on a weekly basis and accessible to the public. Recently, the Venezuelan government put a holt on data reporting. This decision is political in nature and is designed to hide the government's inability to implement timely and relevant health policies. Unfortunately, the lack of openness causes delays in efforts to control the epidemic
 
In response to this situation, we propose several mobiles technologies oriented to inform the communities about the status of these devastating diseases. One of these mobile applications consists of reporting to local hospitals the patient's health situation (fever, acute disease, etc). Once the patient has been admitted for medical care, and released, the information about the health status could be retrieved via a mobile phone accessible datebase.
 
Another way to alert the population about mosquito borne diseases would be to obtain information on the amounts of mosquitoes transmitting dengue. This novel way of reporting mosquito alerts could be crucial for predicting outbreaks as the virus is present in the mosquito prior to biting and transmitting disease to humans.
 
We propose the following:
 

• Develop and deploy an intelligent mosquito trap device (consisting of human bait, fan and container) attached to a cell phone with a sensor that would allow the weighing (counting) of mosquitos in various urban areas (see attachment). The cell phone is able to send an alert message indicating that high levels of mosquitoes have been reached inside the trap. The increase in the number of mosquitoes in urban areas have been shown to be correlated to the appearance of dengue outbreaks.
• Develop an interactive voice response alert system. The user will access the compiled data dialing into an interactive voice response system.  For example, color codes can be used to indicate the level of risk of mosquito biting. A simple green-yellow-red alert can provide information about the level of risk of transmission in your area. In addition, the warning system will be able to collect data over time and over a large area, allowing analysis of the data gathered from the various devices around the city to deliver (text, graphical) distribution of the levels of the mosquitoes in any given time.
• Design a campaign to create awareness in the community about the importance of high mosquito levels in the transmission of Dengue. Educate the population to use mobile phones to obtain information about prevention and the spread of mosquitos transmitted diseases.