Dengue Fever Surveillance in India Using Text Mining in Public Media

Abstract

Abstract.Despite the improvement in health conditions across the world, communicable diseases remain among the leading mortality causes in many countries. Combating communicable diseases depends on surveillance, preventive measures, outbreak investigation, and the establishment of control mechanisms. Delays in obtaining country-level data of confirmed communicable disease cases, such as dengue fever, are prompting new efforts for short- to medium-term data. News articles highlight dengue infections, and they can reveal how public health messages, expert findings, and uncertainties are communicated to the public. In this article, we analyze dengue news articles in Asian countries, with a focus in India, for each month in 2014. We investigate how the reports cluster together, and uncover how dengue cases, public health messages, and research findings are communicated in the press. Our main contributions are to 1) uncover underlying topics from news articles that discuss dengue in Asian countries in 2014; 2) construct topic evolution graphs through the year; and 3) analyze the life cycle of dengue news articles in India, then relate them to rainfall, monthly reported dengue cases, and the Breteau Index. We show that the five main topics discussed in the newspapers in Asia in 2014 correspond to 1) prevention; 2) reported dengue cases; 3) politics; 4) prevention relative to other diseases; and 5) emergency plans. We identify that rainfall has 0.92 correlation with the reported dengue cases extracted from news articles. Based on our findings, we conclude that the proposed method facilitates the effective discovery of evolutionary dengue themes and patterns.

Chemical composition and larvicidal activities of Azolla pinnata extracts against Aedes (Diptera:Culicidae)

“…Currently, Malaysia has recorded 55,744 dengue cases, with 131 deaths between January and July 2017 [ 3 ]. The worldwide distribution of dengue epidemics includes 124 countries, and 3.61 billion people are at risk of being infected, with 500 million at risk of infection each year [ 4 ].…”

Evaluation of Two Different Solvents for Azolla pinnata Extracts on Chemical Compositions and Larvicidal Activity against Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae)

“…Mosquitoes cause great health problems in the world because of their predominant role in causing malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, Zika, and several other disease transmissions [1]. A total of 124 countries were affected by dengue epidemics with approximately 3.61 billion humans at high risk of being infected and yearly 500 million people in denture infection effectively [2]. Meanwhile, Malaysia has recorded 55,744 dengue cases with 131 deaths between January and July 2017 [3].…”

Vilela EFM. Dengue na mídia: tudo aquilo que você não vê. Jundiaí: Paco Editorial; 2016.

“…The theme of chapter 11 is pessimistic, since the author affirms, based on her research, that there are no health professionals with solid training in social communication and vice versa. However, Vilela states that the media can be very important in reducing dengue mortality and morbidity 5 . Data from official surveys, when released, are outdated and do not represent small populations, which is not the case of newspapers and magazines 5 .…”

“…However, Vilela states that the media can be very important in reducing dengue mortality and morbidity 5 . Data from official surveys, when released, are outdated and do not represent small populations, which is not the case of newspapers and magazines 5 .…”