A monitoring system based on energetically sustainable wireless network was set up to achieve remote real-time monitoring sensing to entomological surveillance in a village with historical presence of Triatoma infestans and other triatomines in domestic and peridomestic areas. The traps with sensors have been installed inside the houses and in chicken coops. Infrared photoelectric sensors are used for detecting the insect entrance into a labyrinth trap, which has an insect pheromone attractor. Once the insect is detected the information is collected and transmitted to a data warehouse base Internet server, where a decision tree software performs the monitoring and alerting that could be sent to the health decision makers. The system was installed in twenty houses in a poor region of the Central Paraguayan Chaco in South America showing encouraging results. A total of 2612 intrusions were detected during a period of 10 months, the more amount of detections occurred when temperature oscillated between 20 °C and 34 °C and rainfall was lesser than 4 mm. Sensors detected an important number of triatomine intrusions confirming the potential use of this system to monitor Chagas disease vector in endemic regions estimating spatial and temporal population densities during dry and hot periods

http://www.cedicpy.com/darti

• Latin America and the Caribbean

• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• Remote and rural communities
• Children under 5

This project is replicable because the technology used is simple, modular and easy to access. In addition, it uses open source-hardware with the DIY (do it yourself) philosophy. Likewise, this project is replicable by any of the 18 countries, in which Chagas disease is endemic, through its disease control programs.

This project is sustainable because it reduces the costs of the Chagas disease control program by reducing inspection visits to the surveillance zone. In addition, it improves the surveillance capacity thanks to the fact that the developed system is in real time, increasing the chances of detecting a reinfestation by vinchuca early. It is also sustainable because once the system is installed, very qualified people are not required for its maintenance. Finally, the developed system works autonomously thanks to the use of a solar energy source.

This project promotes the use of information technology to combat an endemic disease, introducing sensor traps in the homes of indigenous peoples, capturing as much data as possible in order not only to alert early the presence of the insect, but to register some variables of interest (such as humidity and temperature) in order to obtain more information about the behavior of the transmitting vectors of the disease.