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Project Title

Dengue Prevention and Control in the Post-COVID-19 Era: New Challenges and Role of Innovative Technology

Project Year

2024

Project Number

HWG_102_2024A

Project Session

Session 1

Project Type

Standard

Project Status

Completed Project
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Project No.

HWG_102_2024A

Project Title

*
Dengue Prevention and Control in the Post-COVID-19 Era: New Challenges and Role of Innovative Technology

Project Status

Completed Project

Fund Account

*
APEC Support Fund

Sub-fund

ASF: Human Security

Project Year

2024

Project Session

*
Session 1

APEC Funding

95,000

Co-funding Amount

70,000

Total Project Value

165,000

Sponsoring Forum

*
Health Working Group (HWG)

Topics

Health; Digital Economy

Committee

SOM Steering Committee on Economic and Technical Cooperation (SCE)

Other Fora Involved

Other Non-APEC Stakeholders Involved

 

Proposing Economy(ies)

Chinese Taipei

Co-Sponsoring Economies

Chile; Indonesia; Japan; Malaysia; Peru; Philippines; Singapore; United States; Viet Nam

Expected Start Date

01/09/2024

Expected Completion Date

31/12/2025

Project Proponent Name 1

Jen-Hsiang Chuang

Job Title 1

Director-General

Organization 1

Centers of Disease Control, Ministry of Health and Welfare

Telephone 1

+886 2 23918508

Email 1

angellai@cdc.gov.tw

Project Proponent Name 2

Ying-Fang Chen

Job Title 2

Project coordinator

Organization 2

Centers of Disease Control, Ministry of Health and Welfare

Telephone 2

+886 2 23579861

Email 2

yvongc@cdc.gov.tw

Declaration

Jen-Hsiang Chuang

Project Summary

In the post-COVID-19 era, the reopening of borders, coupled with global warming, has led to a resurgence of the global dengue fever epidemic.

Chinese Taipei proposes a project to provide APEC economies with a platform to share and discuss effective dengue prevention strategies. This project will strengthen sustainable and affordable control measures and clinical management for dengue prevention, thereby protecting people’s health.

Chinese Taipei proposes to host a 2-day In-person Conference in April 2025, which will include interactive sessions that enable the sharing of members’ dengue/severe dengue prevention strategies, technology, and clinical management experiences, as well as a site visit to a mosquito-borne diseases control research center in Tainan.

Relevance

Region

With a 10-fold increase in global incidence over the past 20 years, dengue fever is the fastest spreading mosquito-borne viral disease. In recent years, global warming caused by climate change along with unprecedented heavy rainfall has given rise to the breeding habitats of mosquitoes expanding to higher altitudes and latitudes, bringing dengue fever to areas never been before threatened by this debilitating illness, while urbanization and deforestation also increase the risk of dengue. Currently, dengue fever circulates in over 100 economies, with approximately half of the world's population (about 3.9 billion people) residing in dengue-endemic areas. The most severely affected regions are the Americas, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific, with Asia accounting for 70% of the global disease burden. Each year, about 390 million people contract dengue fever, leading to varying degrees of clinical symptoms in approximately 96 million individuals. 

Dengue poses a significant threat to the health and economies of endemic areas. With the lifting of border control and frequent domestic exchange in the post-COVID-19 era plus overlapping symptoms and coinfections, complicated by the fact that personnel dedicated to vector control, healthcare, and research have been diverted from dengue to COVID-19, a resurgence of dengue after COVID-19 has been reported in many areas. In light of the growing global epidemic, it is necessary to address the challenges in dengue prevention and clinical management. Preventing or reducing dengue virus transmission depends entirely on vector population control and interruption of human–vector contact. Despite the Integrated Vector Management (IVM) approach promoted by WHO for vector population control, there is no specific treatment for dengue/severe dengue infection.

However, early detection and access to proper medical care can lower the fatality rate to below 1%. 

Therefore, this project aims to provide APEC member economies with a platform to share and discuss the best practices or models of collaboration between public authority, private sector, and academia in developing effective dengue prevention strategies, which should strengthen sustainable and affordable control measures against and clinical management of the epidemic, thereby protecting people’s health and stabilizing the economy.

Eligibility and Fund Priorities
This project meets the eligibility criteria of the ASF Human Security Sub-Fund by assisting APEC developing economies in building capacity to adopt best practices of dengue prevention and control in the post-COVID-19 Era. The project is designed to contribute to the key areas of “Promotion of Interoperability” and “Promoting Innovation and Adoption of Enabling Technologies and Services” of the APEC Internet and Digital Economy Roadmap. The project focuses on the links between the public and private sectors (e.g., pest control operators) to support research and development of digital tools used to detect and monitor potential infectious disease outbreaks. In addition, this project aims to ensure that women are included and actively participate in all sessions and will collect and report gender data to identify the gaps.

Capacity Building
The project will help member economies build their capacity for safe and efficient dengue prevention and control. This meets APEC’s capacity building goals by focusing on improving the economic and social well-being of the people in the Asia-Pacific region, and attaining sustainable growth and equitable development in the region. The project intends to enhance the capacity of developing member economies in this region through the exchange of knowledge and experiences in managing infectious diseases, thereby enabling member economies to improve their strategies for preventing dengue and utilizing digital technologies with a whole-of-society approach that ensures community health.

Objectives

The specific objectives of this project are to:

(1)  share experiences and information on dengue prevention among various member economies and stakeholders, and discuss the challenges posed by the impact of global warming on vectors and dengue outbreaks.

(2)  introduce advances in surveillance, environmental management, vector control and studies, and digital technology (epidemic geographic information systems, risk prediction models, unmanned ground vehicle systems, etc.) for dengue prevention to enhance the capacity of APEC developing economies to prevent dengue outbreaks and manage clinical cases.

(3) establish channels for dengue data exchange to build an effective and long-term cooperative relationship.

Alignment

APEC

- This project meets Priority 2 of Peru’s policy priorities for APEC 2024, Innovation and Digitalization, to promote the transition to the formal and global economy which focuses on the importation of digital technologies to help prevent epidemics, strengthen disease surveillance, and vector control, and help reduce economic losses.

- This project aligns with Driver 3 of the Putrajaya Vision 2040: “Strong, Balanced, Secure, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth” and two of the objectives of the Aotearoa Plan of Action (APA). These two objectives are: (1) “To ensure that the Asia-Pacific region is resilient to shocks, crises, pandemics and other emergencies, we will foster quality growth that brings palpable benefits and greater health and wellbeing to all, including MSMEs, women and others with untapped economic potential.”; (2) “We will promote economic policies, cooperation and growth, which will support global efforts to comprehensively address all environmental challenges, including climate change, extreme weather and natural disasters, for a sustainable planet.”

- This project is in line with the 2023 Leaders’ Declaration, in which the leaders declared that “we must harness technological and economic progress to continue to unleash the enormous potential and tremendous dynamism across our region, spur economic growth, as well as to address all environmental challenges, including climate change.”

Forum

HWG Work Plan for 2023, Promoting Gender and Health Equity: “APEC 2023 also provides the opportunity to build on ongoing health collaboration to address gender and health equity in the context of health systems and strengthened pandemic preparedness and response. This includes protecting against the burdens of morbidity and mortality through disease prevention, screening, early detection, and treatment of diseases.”

- This project aligns with the core working principles of the Health Working Group Strategic Plan 2021-2025: “The HGW will encourage and facilitate both cross-sectoral collaboration and collaboration with other APEC for and international health bodies and ensure the HWG is maximizing contributions at the intersection of health and the economy”.

- This project relates to the North Star: A 2030 Strategy for Enabling Resilient Health Systems and Promoting the Health of Our Populations in the Asia Pacific focused on strengthened collaboration across the region by demonstrating the economic imperative of: “addressing pandemic and public health emergency preparedness, response, and recovery; preventing and controlling infectious diseases.”

Beneficiaries and Outputs

Outputs

1) 2-Day In-Person Conference

This project will take the form of a 2-day In-person Conference, which will be held in Chinese Taipei in April 2025. This project will consist of a one-and- a-half-day conference and a half-day site visit.

1) Conference:

a. Purpose: Introducing practical applications of dengue prevention and control in the post-COVID-19 era with the delegates of member economies who participate in this project in preparation for future health crisis. b. Duration: One and a half day. The length of any session will be within 3 hours.

c. Location: Tainan City.

d. Participants: Health policy makers in public and private partnerships, public health and environment officers, professionals and experts in dengue vectors, epidemiologist research, laboratory diagnosis along with clinical management, as well as representatives of private sectors from APEC economies and non-APEC stakeholders. The number of participants is expected to be at least 80-100 from 13-15 APEC economies.

e. The conference will encompass 2-3 sessions/day, and the discussion topics through the speeches will include:

I. Experiences in and cases of public-private partnerships for dengue prevention and control in the post-COVID-19 era will be shared and discussed in relevant speeches.

II. Current development and challenges of dengue vaccines that are assessed for public health impact.

III. Latest research development in vector surveillance and control with cooperation from private sectors or academia.

IV. Demonstration of innovative real-time and integrated information models developed by digital technologies for disease and vector surveillance, environmental management, and risk management.

2) Site visit

a.  Purpose: Enhancing the capacity of developing member economies in this region by exchanging the latest research and knowledge during the site visit.

b.  Duration: A half day (on the second day afternoon).

c. Location: Mosquito-borne diseases control research center in Tainan.

d. Discussion topics: The center’s specialists will be on site to provide insights into the potential of using biological control strategies against dengue with Wolbachia models, which may block mosquito-borne viruses that can be transmitted to people.

2) Conference Report
The Conference Report will comply with the APEC publication and logo guidelines and APEC copyright-related policies. The expected length of the report will be within 30 pages excluding annexes. The rough structure of the document will include: cover page, table of contents, introduction, and topic- based summaries of presentations, as well as conclusions and recommendations after data analysis.

Outcomes

1) Greater awareness of global warming and its unprecedented impact on flooding, thereby affecting vectors and dengue outbreaks.

2) Improving knowledge of advanced dengue prevention strategies, such as vector surveillance, environmental management, vector control and studies, and digital technology (epidemic geographic information systems, risk prediction models, unmanned ground vehicle systems, etc.).

3) Deeper understanding of how to manage dengue and severe dengue during epidemic outbreaks by sharing case studies, best practices and experiences in disease surveillance, public awareness campaigns, community mobilization, laboratory diagnosis, and clinical case management and treatment.

4) Improving trust to build an effective network and establish long-term collaborative relationship for ongoing exchange of epidemic information, technology applications, improvements, and innovation.

Beneficiaries
All APEC economies are welcome to participate in the project. The target participants of the project are dengue prevention policy makers and officials, public health officials, quarantine officers, experts in communicable disease prevention and competent authorities, the private sector (e.g., pest control operators), academia, NGOs, and IGOs. The 2-day In-person Conference will provide an opportunity for these groups to emphasize a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach to securing dengue prevention and control in the post-COVID-19era.

Dissemination

1)  Conference handbook, including the agenda, speakers’ presentation abstracts and relevant materials, will be compiled prior to the conference and distributed to the participants on site. An electronic copy of the conference handbook will be uploaded to the conference website which will be set up before the conference. Furthermore, The Conference Report will be produced after the completion of the conference and comply with the APEC guidelines for publications, logos and copyrights. The Conference Report will be published by APEC and disseminated on the official website of the Centers for Disease Control, Ministry of Health and Welfare (https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En ), and shared with all participants and interested stakeholders.

2)The participants are encouraged to make optimal use of the above conference documents. They can duplicate the conference materials and share them with their colleagues and decision-makers to disseminate the knowledge gained after returning to their economies.

3)The target audiences of this conference are expected to include cruise epidemic prevention policy makers and officials, public health officials, quarantine officers, experts in communicable disease prevention, the private sector, academia, NGOs, and IGOs.

Chinese Taipei has no intention of selling outputs resulting from this project.

Gender

Please see Project Proposal in Supporting Documents folder.

Work Plan

Please see Project Proposal in Supporting Documents folder.

Risks

Please see Project Proposal in Supporting Documents folder.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Please see Project Proposal in Supporting Documents folder.

Linkages

Compared with other projects, this project will focus more on dengue prevention and control to reduce the impact of health-related threats on the health, economic and social burden of member economies. This project plans to seek nominations for eligible participants for this 2-day In-person Conference from the Ministries/Departments of Health of APEC member economies. During the preparation of the project, we will consult all member economies to identify suitable expert speakers, moderators, and participants. All non-member participants will be submitted to HWG for endorsement following APEC’s NMP guidelines.

Sustainability

The conference report will be disseminated to relevant stakeholders and beneficiaries for future recall and reference on the website or via emails. We hope the 2-day In-person Conference can facilitate further communication among economies to exchange experience and information on dengue control strategies and on the current situation concerning vectors and dengue epidemic, and to share advanced technologies used for environmental management and vector control. Participants can apply the knowledge and information learned from the 2-day In-person Conference to develop more suitable and sustainable strategies for their home economies. 

The 2-day In-person Conference will facilitate a better understanding of the real dengue situation in the APEC region among the participants through discussing and sharing the latest information on the disease. In our follow-up work, Chinese Taipei will revise our dengue strategic plan based on the new ideas and information obtained from this project. 

In the recent years, more new researches and strategies for dengue control have become available. So far, their uses have only been approved in a few areas and are not yet widely available. We expect the participants to do more research on those new tools after they return to their home economies. 

Through the 2-day In-person Conference, the consensus on the importance of dengue fever control in APEC region can be reached and strengthened. Furthermore, through utilizing the expert network, sustained sharing of expertise to update one another on the latest vector and dengue management and surveillance system can be achieved. 

The cooperation and coordination for dengue fever control and prevention will be taken into consideration in the further stage around APEC regions. It is anticipated that long- term cooperative relationship among APEC member economies can be established to tackle dengue fever together.

Direct Labour

Not Applicable.

Are there any supporting document attached?

Yes
Project No.
Project Title
Project Status
Fund Account
Sub-fund
Project Year
Project Session
APEC Funding
Co-funding Amount
Total Project Value
Sponsoring Forum
Topics
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Other Fora Involved
Other Non-APEC Stakeholders Involved
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Expected Start Date
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Project Proponent Name 1
Job Title 1
Organization 1
Telephone 1
Email 1
Project Proponent Name 2
Job Title 2
Organization 2
Telephone 2
Email 2
Declaration
Project Summary
Relevance
Objectives
Alignment
Beneficiaries and Outputs
Dissemination
Gender
Work Plan
Risks
Monitoring and Evaluation
Linkages
Sustainability
Direct Labour
Are there any supporting document attached?
hdFldAdmin
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