€10,000 prize for dengue projects

02 June 2016

A new competition has been launched to find initiatives and campaigns that help to combat dengue fever by integrating the new vaccine into the anti-dengue arsenal.

Dengue fever causes nearly 400 million infections annually, impacting half of the world’s population. The WHO aims to reduce dengue mortality by 50% and morbidity by 25% by 2020.

New tools, including the world’s first vaccine, innovative vector control measures and smarter surveillance systems could be game-changers. But only if we use them.

For these technologies to improve public health, community-based programs will play a key role. The scope for behavioural changing interventions is considerable.

The €10,000 Break Dengue Community Action Prize is run by Break Dengue, a non-profit organization connecting dengue projects from around the world so that together they can have a bigger impact.

The organisers are looking for pilot initiatives or simply ideas to design and test new approaches to integrating a dengue vaccine as part of a holistic plan to combat dengue. These ideas or initiatives should ideally identify, understand and address community-level drivers and barriers for dengue vaccine integration, its sustained uptake and/or compliance.

Proposals should:

• Have SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)
• Show scalability potential
• Demonstrate potential sustainability
• Arise from understanding and insights to community’s needs, drivers, barriers, priorities and strengths
• Consider monitoring & ongoing evaluation

These issues will be discussed at a roundtable at the Aid & Development Asia Summit in Bangkok on June 21 at 15:30 pm at the UN Conference Center, session “Dengue Vaccination: Drivers, Barriers, and How to Overcome Possible Barriers to Its Adoption”. This is an opportunity for participants to learn more about this topic and to find inspiration for new initiatives. A report on the meeting will be shared on Break Dengue.

Click here to enter this €10,000 prize.