Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (MINCYT), Argentina

The third workshop of the 2014-2016 Project: ‘Addressing the emergence and dispersion of leishmaniasis in the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay’, with the collaboration of PAHO and the support of the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada, was held at the INMeT (National Institute of Tropical Medicine) in Puerto Iguazú, Argentina during the first week of August 2016.

Representatives of the research teams, federal and local health authorities and stakeholders of the three countries, Uruguay and Bolivia, who joined the project in 2015 and 2016 respectively, met to discuss the results and to propose experimental alternative strategies for the surveillance and control of cutaneous and visceral leishmanises in the region and the border areas.

The multidisciplinary ‘One-Health’ approach allows the integration of social, bio-ecological and bio-medical data in order to develop a risk stratification based on dynamic scenarios, rather than static locations. Therefore, the project goal will be to generate a valid tool to characterize locally emergent scenarios of leishmaniasis transmission as an early warning strategy. Another goal is to provide county, community and individual, feasible and sound recommendations of environmental management to avoid epidemics at potential ‘hot spots’, and so to prevent a further spread of the epidemics between jurisdictions and countries.