1 Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis, resurgence of vector-borne diseases and implications for 2 spillover in the region: a review and a call for action. 3 4 Working group on vector-borne diseases in Venezuela 5 6 7 Corresponding author: 8 Dr. Martin Llewellyn, PhD 9 Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, University of 10 Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom 11 Phone - 00441413305571 12
[email protected] 13 14 15 16 1 17 Summary 18 In recent years Venezuela has faced a severe economic crisis precipitated by political instability 19 and declining oil revenue. Public health provision has suffered particularly. Herein, we assess the 20 impact of Venezuela’s healthcare crisis on vector-borne diseases and the spillover to 21 neighbouring countries. Between 2000-2015 Venezuela witnessed a 365% increase malaria cases 22 followed by a 68% increase (319,765 cases) in late 2017. Neighbouring countries such as Brazil 23 have reported an escalating trend of imported cases from Venezuela from 1,538 (2014) to 3,129 24 (2017). Active Chagas disease transmission is reported with seroprevalence in children (<10 25 years) as high as 12.5% in one community tested (N=64). There has been a nine-fold rise in the 26 mean incidence of dengue between 1990 to 2016. Estimated rates of chikungunya and Zika are 27 6,975 and 2,057 cases per 100,000 population, respectively, during their epidemic peaks. The re- 28 emergence of many vector-borne diseases represents a public health crisis in Venezuela and has 29 the possibility of severely undermining regional disease elimination efforts.