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Background Recent malaria control efforts in mainland Tanzania have led to progressive changes in the prevalence of malaria infection in children, from 18.1% (2008) to 7.3% (2017). As the landscape of malaria transmission changes, a sub-national stratification becomes crucial for optimized cost-effective implementation of interventions. This paper describes the processes, data and outputs of the approach used to produce a simplified, pragmatic malaria risk stratification of 184 councils in mainland Tanzania. Methods Assemblies of annual parasite incidence and fever test positivity rate for the period 2016–2017 as well as confirmed malaria incidence and malaria positivity in pregnant women for the period 2015–2017 were obtained from routine district health information software. In addition, parasite prevalence in school children (PfPR5to16) were obtained from the two latest biennial council representative school malaria parasitaemia surveys, 2014–2015 and 2017. The PfPR5to16 served as a guide to set appropriate cut-offs for the other indicators. For each indicator, the maximum value from the past 3 years was used to allocate councils to one of four risk groups: very low ( Results Out of 184 councils, 28 were in the very low stratum (12% of the population), 34 in the low stratum (28% of population), 49 in the moderate stratum (23% of population) and 73 in the high stratum (37% of population). Geographically, most of the councils in the low and very low strata were situated in the central corridor running from the north-east to south-west parts of the country, whilst the areas in the moderate to high strata were situated in the north-west and south-east regions. Conclusion A stratification approach based on multiple routine and survey malaria information was developed. This pragmatic approach can be rapidly reproduced without the use of sophisticated statistical methods, hence, lies within the scope of national malaria programmes across Africa.

In Germany, sheep are the main source of human Q fever epidemics, but data on Coxiella burnetii (C. burnetii) infections and related risk factors in the German sheep population remain scarce. In this cross-sectional study, a standardised interview was conducted across 71 exclusively sheep as well as mixed (sheep and goat) farms to identify animal and herd level risk factors associated with the detection of C. burnetii antibodies or pathogen-specific gene fragments via univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis. Serum samples and genital swabs from adult males and females of 3367 small ruminants from 71 farms were collected and analysed using ELISA and qPCR, respectively. On animal level, univariable analysis identified young animals (

A prevalence study was conducted on German sheep flocks including goats if they cohabitated with sheep. In addition, a novel approach was applied to identify an infection at the herd-level before lambing season with preputial swabs, suspecting venereal transmission and ensuing colonisation of preputial mucosa with Coxiella (C.) burnetii. Blood samples and genital swabs were collected from breeding males and females after the mating season and were analysed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) respectively. In total, 3367 animals were sampled across 71 flocks. The true herd-level prevalence adjusted for misclassification probabilities of the applied diagnostic tests using the Rogan-Gladen estimator for the prevalence estimate and a formula by Lang and Reiczigel (2014) for the confidence limits, ranged between 31.3% and 33% (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 17.3–45.5) detected by the ELISA and/or qPCR. Overall 26–36.6% (95% CI 13–56.8) were detected by ELISA, 13.9% (95% CI 4.5–23.2) by the qPCR and 7.9–11.2% (95% CI 0.08–22.3) by both tests simultaneously. The range of results is due to data obtained from literature with different specifications for test quality for ELISA. Among eight farms with females shedding C. burnetii, three farms (37.5%) could also be identified by preputial swabs from breeding sires. This indicates less reliability of preputial swabs if used as a single diagnostic tool to detect C. burnetii infection at the herd-level.