Sensors And Drones Deployed To Fight Disease In Peruvian Amazon

Climate factors can play a role in the spread of tropical diseases — now a Peruvian researcher is developing tools to better understand those relationships.

Dr Gabriel Carrasco-Escobar, a researcher from the Institute of Tropical Medicine “Alexander von Humboldt” at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), says that its necessary to study these links between climate and diseases (like dengue, malaria, and leptospirosis) at the very local level, so that local authorities can make evidence-based policy decisions.

“A well-calibrated predictive model with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution can serve as an early-warning or rapid-response system and help mitigate the public health impact of these diseases,” Carrasco-Escobar says, adding that this work is a natural outgrowth of the ongoing HARMONIZE project, which was to build resilience against climate-susceptible infectious diseases in low- and middle-resource settings.

“One of the biggest challenges we have faced is the lack of earth observation data at the required spatial and temporal resolution; but to address this, we have deployed novel low-cost technologies in the Loreto region of Peru, including drones for high-resolution RGB, thermal and multispectral imaging, autonomous-recording acoustic sensors, weather stations, and air pollution sensors,” he says, “We now have protocols in place to standardize data collection and streamline data flows and will bsoon be integrating this data into a local predictive model for dengue.”

Dr Carrasco-Escobar’s research project on vector-borne disease forecasting in the Peruvian Amazon was one of nine winners in the 2023 Falcon Awards for Disease Elimination, from the Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE).

From Lima To The Amazon

Carrasco-Escobar grew up in Lima, Peru and says that his parents had health- and social-oriented backgrounds.

“So in my childhood I was influenced by discussions from multiple lenses, but I started my personal journey doing a BSc in Biology, then an MSc in epidemiology, and finally a PhD in Public Health,” he says, adding that in all those stages he was interested in incorporating methods and technologies developed in other fields into the challenges in public health.

“Much of the burden of infectious diseases falls on the Global South, and their impact is exacerbated by inequalities in access to healthcare and basic services as well as by the disproportionate effects of climate change in the region,” Carrasco-Escobar says. adding that the region has enormous ecologic, social and cultural diversity, necessitating studying challenges and proposing solutions that are specific to each setting.

“Many global challenges disproportionately affect the Global South, and Global South scientists, with their unique understanding of local ecosystems and cultures, have more tools to both identify aspects of these challenges that have a more direct impact on local populations and propose context-appropriate solutions,” he says, adding that strengthening research capacities in the Global South contributes to building resilience, reducing inequalities, and empowering future generations of scientists in the region.

Fighting Malaria With Drones

Elsewhere in the Global South, other new technologies are also helping to fight mosquito-borne disease.

Leka Tingitana has lived in rural Africa for more than 10 years and is the managing director of Tanzania Flying Labs, which trains locals in new technical and business skills, finds new uses for robots and incubates new businesses.

Every year in the eastern African country of Tanzania, malaria infects more than 10 million people killing 80,000 – and until now eradication efforts have been largely focused on costly and time-consuming manual spraying.

The idea to use drones to spray a non-toxic, biodegradable control agent called Aquatain AMF in rice paddies (breeding habitat) to kill mosquito larvae.

“Aquatain AMF is already a proven mosquito larvicide and we are therefore ready to scale-up its use in Zanzibar and beyond,” Tingitana says, adding that the hope is that the use of drones will lead to lower malaria prevalence and increased farm yield from the improvement in productivity.

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