Sopon Iamsirithaworn

Ministry of Public Health

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Derek A. T. Cummings

University of Florida

Henrik Salje

University of Cambridge

Justin Lessler

Johns Hopkins University

Darunee Buddhari

Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science

Stefan Fernandez

Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science

Stephen J. Thomas

SUNY Upstate Medical University

Soawapak Hinjoy

Ministry of Public Health

Alan L. Rothman

Providence College

Kathryn B. Anderson

SUNY Upstate Medical University

Pilaipan Puthavathana

Mahidol University

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Ministry of Public Health

261

Mahidol University

162

Department of Disease Control

Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science

Chulalongkorn University

University of Oxford

Department of Medical Sciences

Johns Hopkins University

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Field Epidemiology and One Health: Thailand’s Experience

Springer eBooks (2014)

Sopon Iamsirithaworn Karoon Chanachai David M. Castellan

One Health

10.1007/978-4-431-55120-1_9

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Citations (11)

Improving Data Quality for Better Control of Aedes-Borne Disease Risk

IEEE Access (2020)

Naiyana Sahavechaphan Jukkrapong Ponharn Asamaporn Chatrattikorn Pongsakorn Sadakorn Sopon Iamsirithaworn

Visual larval survey of container habitats is conducted as a routine mission of the Department of Disease Control (DDC), Thailand. To facilitate this, DDC has deployed a mobile application, namely TanRabad SURVEY, throughout the country since 2016. Here, each inspected place with its intrinsic place type and building names must be initially input via natural language to proceed the larval survey data collection. Upon a survey completion, the appropriate larval indices (e.g. House Index (HI), Container Index (CI) and Breteau Index (BI)) are automatically calculated. HI and BI are for villages, while CI is for other inspected places. These larval indices are then applied as factors for the vector control management. However, about 21% of inspected places stored in TanRabad database are found with inappropriate place types. These poor place types result in the procurement of inapplicable larval indices and hence ineffective vector control management. Ideally, the quality of place types can potentially be improved once their poorness is notified to users. This paper has thus proposed a novel and comprehensive place type quality assessment technique, namely pAssessor, with respect to buildings textually and variously defined for places. Specifically, pAssessor is driven by the building-place ontology, building semantic selection, boosted features, learned building-place relations and probability values of all place types. The experimental results showed that the efficiency of pAssessor in assessing the quality of place types is greater than 87.5%.

10.1109/access.2020.3013945

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Citations (4)

Collective activities of the Thai Coordinating Unit for One Health (CUOH): Past activities and future directions

One Health (2024)

Ratanaporn Tangwangvivat Rata Rungsitiyakorn Chiti Hoonaukit Somruethai Na Nan Katie R. Hooker

In Thailand, One Health concepts have been implemented among government agencies, academic institutions, intergovernment, and civil society organizations. The Thai Coordinating Unit for One Health (CUOH) was established as a collaborating body for One Health-related activities in the country in 2014. To better understand what activities CUOH has completed thus far and to assess future activities, we conducted a network analysis to identify and visualize linkages between organizations and activities from 2015 to 2021. Activities were divided into four categories: organizing meetings, developing products, providing funds, and managing resources. Most of the 114 CUOH-managed meeting participants were representatives from 72 government and 20 academic institutions. The Thai Ministry of Public Health's Department of Disease Control participated in 148 meetings, the highest attendance among all organizations working with CUOH. The first CUOH guideline or manual was published in 2020, and 11 were published in 2021. In funding management, the CUOH worked with 25 organizations to carry out 71 projects from 2015 to 2021. Additionally, the CUOH played an important role in allocating COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CUOH has connected organizations working in different health sectors to collaborate jointly through meetings and projects that use a One Health approach, which can holistically improve health management in Thailand. Diverse funding sources are needed to ensure the sustainability of the unit in the future.

Christian ministry

Attendance

Pandemic

10.1016/j.onehlt.2024.100728

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Key Findings and Comparisons From Analogous Case-Cluster Studies for Dengue Virus Infection Conducted in Machala, Ecuador, and Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand

Frontiers in Public Health (2020)

Kathryn B. Anderson Anna M. Stewart‐Ibarra Darunee Buddhari Efrain Felix Beltran Ayala Rachel Sippy

Dengue viruses (DENV) pose a significant and increasing threat to human health across broad regions of the globe. Currently, prevention, control, and treatment strategies are limited. Promising interventions are on the horizon, including multiple vaccine candidates under development and a renewed and innovative focus on controlling the vector, Aedes aegypti. However, significant gaps persist in our understanding of the similarities and differences in DENV epidemiology across regions of potential implementation and evaluation. In this manuscript, we highlight and compare findings from two analogous cluster-based studies for DENV transmission and pathogenesis conducted in Thailand and Ecuador to identify key features and questions for further pursuit. Despite a remarkably similar incidence of DENV infection among enrolled neighborhood contacts at the two sites, we note a higher occurrence of secondary infection and severe illness in Thailand compared to Ecuador. A higher force of infection in Thailand, defined as the incidence of infection among susceptible individuals, is suggested by the higher number of captured Aedes mosquitoes per household, the increasing proportion of asymptomatic infections with advancing age, and the high proportion of infections identified as secondary-type infections by serology. These observations should be confirmed in long-term, parallel prospective cohort studies conducted across regions, which would advantageously permit characterization of baseline immune status (susceptibility) and contemporaneous assessment of risks and risk factors for dengue illness.

Dengue vaccine

10.3389/fpubh.2020.00002

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Assessing the role of multiple mechanisms increasing the age of dengue cases in Thailand

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022)

Angkana T. Huang Saki Takahashi Henrik Salje Lin Wang Bernardo García‐Carreras

The mean age of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) cases increased considerably in Thailand from 8.1 to 24.3 y between 1981 and 2017 (mean annual increase of 0.45 y). Alternative proposed explanations for this trend, such as changes in surveillance practices, reduced mosquito–human contact, and shifts in population demographics, have different implications for global dengue epidemiology. To evaluate the contribution of each of these hypothesized mechanisms to the observed data, we developed 20 nested epidemiological models of dengue virus infection, allowing for variation over time in population demographics, infection hazards, and reporting rates. We also quantified the effect of removing or retaining each source of variation in simulations of the age trajectory. Shifts in the age structure of susceptibility explained 58% of the observed change in age. Adding heterogeneous reporting by age and reductions in per-serotype infection hazard to models with shifts in susceptibility explained an additional 42%. Reductions in infection hazards were mostly driven by changes in the number of infectious individuals at any time (another consequence of shifting age demographics) rather than changes in the transmissibility of individual infections. We conclude that the demographic transition drives the overwhelming majority of the observed change as it changes both the age structure of susceptibility and the number of infectious individuals. With the projected Thai population age structure, our results suggest a continuing increase in age of DHF cases, shifting the burden toward individuals with more comorbidity. These insights into dengue epidemiology may be relevant to many regions of the globe currently undergoing comparable changes in population demographics.

Demographics

Demographic change

10.1073/pnas.2115790119

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Investigation of Mumps Outbreak in a Rural District, Thailand, June – October 2010.

Manita Phanawadee L Ieowongjaroen Jamorn Makaroon K Pati S Pattamawath

Background : A mumps outbreak was detected by a nurse at outpatient department of Pua Crown Prince Hospital in Nan Province in September 2010. The investigation was initiated by the joint Surveillance and Rapid Response Team to verify a diagnosis and confirm outbreak, describe epidemiological characteristic, implement control measures and study MMR vaccine effectiveness. Methods : A descriptive study was conducted in the hospital through the reviews of medical records, interviews with cases, their families, neighbors, physicians, health authorities, and calculating the secondary attack rate within households in 2 villages. Active case finding was performed with a case definition of acute swelling or diagnosed acute lymphadenitis at pre-auricular or submandibular or submental area or diagnosed mumps with the onset during 1 June to 13 October 2010. Laboratory-confirmed cases were found through IgM by ELISA, viral PCR or isolation from buccal swabs. A prospective cohort study was applied to evaluate vaccine effectiveness after mass MMR vaccination among children of 1-6 years age-group in 10 sub-districts. Results : Until 13 October 2010, 129 suspect mumps cases (attack rate=0.2%) were found in 11/12 subdistricts, 68% of cases were in children <7 years. In kindergarteners, the highest attack rate was 34% (36/107). 10 laboratory-confirmed cases included 6 IgM and 4 mumps virus genotype J by PCR. Secondary attack rate was 25% among household members. A single dose of MMR vaccine was administered to 2,984 (78%) children and the vaccine effectiveness was estimated 65% (95%CI = -55%, 92%). Conclusions : A genotype J mumps outbreak in Pua District, Nan Province occurred between June and October 2010, affected mainly 1-6 year’s children. Vaccine effectiveness was modest (65%) and the vaccine coverage of 78.3% had resulted in a successful outbreak control 5 weeks afterward.

Attack rate

MMR vaccine

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Deciphering the impacts of vaccination and immunity on pertussis epidemiology in Thailand

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)

Julie C. Blackwood Derek A. T. Cummings Hélène Broutin Sopon Iamsirithaworn Pejman Rohani

Pertussis is a highly infectious respiratory disease that is currently responsible for nearly 300,000 annual deaths worldwide, primarily in infants in developing countries. Despite sustained high vaccine uptake, a resurgence in pertussis incidence has been reported in a number of countries. This resurgence has led to critical questions regarding the transmission impacts of vaccination and pertussis immunology. We analyzed pertussis incidence in Thailand—both age-stratified and longitudinal aggregate reports—over the past 30 y. To dissect the contributions of waning pertussis immunity and repeat infections to pertussis epidemiology in Thailand following a pronounced increase in vaccine uptake, we used likelihood-based statistical inference methods to evaluate the support for multiple competing transmission models. We found that, in contrast to other settings, there is no evidence for pertussis resurgence in Thailand, with each model examined pointing to a substantial rise in herd immunity over the past 30 y. Using a variety of empirical metrics, we verified our findings by documenting signatures of changing herd immunity over the study period. Importantly, this work leads to the conclusion that repeat infections have played little role in shaping pertussis epidemiology in Thailand. Our results are surprisingly emphatic in support of measurable impact of herd immunity given the uncertainty associated with pertussis epidemiology.

Herd Immunity

Whooping cough

Pertussis vaccine

10.1073/pnas.1220908110

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Citations (53)

Spatiotemporal multi-disease transmission dynamic measure for emerging diseases: an application to dengue and zika integrated surveillance in Thailand

BMC Medical Research Methodology (2019)

Chawarat Rotejanaprasert Andrew Lawson Sopon Iamsirithaworn

Abstract Background New emerging diseases are public health concerns in which policy makers have to make decisions in the presence of enormous uncertainty. This is an important challenge in terms of emergency preparation requiring the operation of effective surveillance systems. A key concept to investigate the dynamic of infectious diseases is the basic reproduction number. However it is difficult to be applicable in real situations due to the underlying theoretical assumptions. Methods In this paper we propose a robust and flexible methodology for estimating disease strength varying in space and time using an alternative measure of disease transmission within the hierarchical modeling framework. The proposed measure is also extended to allow for incorporating knowledge from related diseases to enhance performance of surveillance system. Results A simulation was conducted to examine robustness of the proposed methodology and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method allows robust estimation of the disease strength across simulation scenarios. A real data example is provided of an integrative application of Dengue and Zika surveillance in Thailand. The real data example also shows that combining both diseases in an integrated analysis essentially decreases variability of model fitting. Conclusions The proposed methodology is robust in several simulated scenarios of spatiotemporal transmission force with computing flexibility and practical benefits. This development has potential for broad applicability as an alternative tool for integrated surveillance of emerging diseases such as Zika.

Robustness

Disease Surveillance

Zika Virus

10.1186/s12874-019-0833-6

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Evidence of transmission of influenza A and influenza B co-infection in healthcare workers

The Journal of Infection in Developing Countries (2022)

Viravarn Luvira Narin Thippornchai Pornsawan Leaungwutiwong Tanaya Siripoon Pittaya Piroonamornpun

Introduction: Co-infection of influenza A and B has been reported, especially in outbreak situations, but epidemiological and clinical information is limited. We aimed to investigate an outbreak of influenza among health care workers in which the index case suffered from influenza A and B co-infection. Methodology: We investigated the outbreak setting through the utilization of structural questionnaires, molecular methods, and serological tests. Results: Among 13 persons, one index case and five confirmed secondary cases were confirmed. The overall influenza infection rate was 46.2% (6/13), with infection rates for influenza A and B at 38.5% (5/13) and 23.1% (3/13), respectively. Interestingly, one of the secondary cases had influenza A and B co-infection identical to the index case. There was no significant association between vaccination status and influenza infection. Conclusions: This study unveils the demonstration of human-to-human influenza A and B co-infection transmission for the first time. Surveillance systems, combined with epidemiological case investigation comprising molecular diagnosis, should be strengthened for future influenza outbreak preparedness.

Preparedness

Index case

Attack rate

10.3855/jidc.15953

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Effectiveness of heterologous third and fourth dose COVID-19 vaccine schedules for SARS-CoV-2 infection during delta and omicron predominance in Thailand: a test-negative, case-control study

The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia (2022)

Kannikar Intawong Suwat Chariyalertsak Kittipan Chalom Thanachol Wonghirundecha Woravut Kowatcharakul

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has evolved quickly, with numerous waves of different variants of concern resulting in the need for countries to offer continued protection through booster vaccination. To ensure adequate vaccination coverage, Thailand has proactively adopted heterologous vaccination schedules. While randomised controlled trials have assessed homologous schedules in detail, limited data has been reported for heterologous vaccine effectiveness (VE).Utilising a unique active surveillance network established in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, we conducted a test-negative case control study to assess the VE of heterologous third and fourth dose schedules against SARS-CoV-2 infection among suspect-cases during Oct 1-Dec 31, 2021 (delta-predominant) and Feb 1-Apr 10, 2022 (omicron-predominant) periods.After a third dose, effectiveness against delta infection was high (adjusted VE 97%, 95% CI 94-99%) in comparison to moderate protection against omicron (adjusted VE 31%, 95% CI 26-36%). Good protection was observed after a fourth dose (adjusted VE 75%, 95% CI 71-80%). VE was consistent across age groups for both delta and omicron infection. The VE of third or fourth doses against omicron infection were equivalent for the three main vaccines used for boosting in Thailand, suggesting coverage, rather than vaccine type is a much stronger predictor of protection.Appropriately timed booster doses have a high probability of preventing COVID-19 infection with both delta and omicron variants. Our evidence supports the need for ongoing national efforts to increase population coverage of booster doses.This research was supported by the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) under The Smart Emergency Care Services Integration (SECSI) project to Faculty of Public Health Chiang Mai University.

Booster (rocketry)

Heterologous

Pandemic

Booster dose

10.1016/j.lansea.2022.100121

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Citations (24)