Journal of Vaccines & Vaccination

Emerging arbovirus in developing countries in America: Why vaccines are an important part of the answer

13^th Annual Congress on Vaccines, Therapeutics & Travel Medicine: Influenza & Infectious diseases

December 01-02, 2016 Atlanta, USA

Jorge Alberto Panameno Pineda

Fundación Salvadoreña para la Inmunoinfectologia y Medicina Tropical,USA

Keynote: J Vaccines Vaccin

Abstract:

Since the late 70s, in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Dengue Fever made its appearance in the form of outbreaks, after decades of epidemiological silence. Thereafter the incidence increased, becoming an endemic disease in our days and causing a major burden on Health Systems in these regions in terms of morbidity and mortality. In December 2013, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned the regional Health Systems that the autochthonous circulation of Chikungunya virus had been detected in certain francophone Caribbean islands, by April 2014, the virus was circulating in Central America and by December it was present throughout the continent, mainly disseminated by travelers. In May 2015, again OPS issued an alert, this time about Zika virus circulation, it spread across the Pacific Ocean, landing in Brazil. The fundamental link in the chain of transmission of these three arboviruses, is the vector mosquito, its presence in the developing countries of America is directly related to the socio sanitary conditions, primarily to the lack of drinking water, which allows the mosquito to find ideal ecosystems for them to breed. Modifying these conditions may take decades, because they depend on complex social, economic and political elusive mechanisms. In this context within the options to effectively deal with these threats, vaccines present themselves as a real possibility. Although we already have the vaccine against dengue, the availability of budgets must be increased to stimulate research and development, to make available to the medical community these valuable resources that can change history.

Biography :

Jorge Alberto Panameno Pineda has completed his Medical Doctorate in 1990 at Universidad Evangelica of El Salvador followed by his Internal Medicine Residency at the Salvadorian Institute of Social Security and a Master of Science in Tropical Medicine and Infectious and Parasitic Diseases at the University of Brasilia, Brazil in 1996. Currenty he is the Executive Director of the Fundación Salvadoreña para la Inmunoinfectologia y Medicina Tropical, a non-profit organization dedicated to research infectious and parasitic diseases and vaccinology. He was awarded the World Health Travel Award funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2012.

Email: jorge.panameno@gmail.com