Data from: Global distribution maps of the Leishmaniases

Pigott, David M.1; Bhatt, Samir1; Golding, Nick1; Duda, Kirsten A.1; Battle, Katherine E.1; Brady, Oliver J.1; Messina, Jane P.1; Balard, Yves2; Bastien, Patrick2; Pratlong, Francine2; Brownstein, John S.3; Freifeld, Clark C4; Mekaru, Sumiko R.3; Gething, Peter W.1; George, Dylan B.5; Myers, Monica F.1; Reithinger, Richard6; Hay, Simon I.5

Data files

The leishmaniases are vector-borne diseases that have a broad global distribution throughout much of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Despite representing a significant public health burden, our understanding of the global distribution of the leishmaniases remains vague, reliant upon expert opinion and limited to poor spatial resolution. A global assessment of the consensus of evidence for leishmaniasis was performed at a sub-national level by aggregating information from a variety of sources. A database of records of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis occurrence was compiled from published literature, online reports, strain archives and GenBank accessions. These, with a suite of biologically relevant environmental covariates, were used in a boosted regression tree modelling framework to generate global environmental risk maps for the leishmaniases. These high-resolution evidence-based maps can help direct future surveillance activities, identify areas to target for disease control and inform future burden estimation efforts.