Fig 1.
Map of Ghana showing the study sites and the geographical distribution of surveyed communities in the two districts.
Map was generated using ArcGIS 10.7.1 (Esri Inc., Redlands, California, USA). The shapefiles for Ghana and the various regions obtained from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright, CC BY-SA 2.0) were utilized as data sources for plotting the map. Map data from © OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.
Table 1.
Demographic characteristics of study participants.
Fig 2.
Flow chart of study participants.
*The number of individuals tested with RDT in the Wassa Amenfi East district included persons with suspected yaws (n = 1330) and 4 asymptomatic persons who were reported to previously have clinical lesions but received no treatment (2 out of these 4 individuals had a positive RDT).
Table 2.
Prevalence and seroprevalence of yaws across study districts.
Table 3.
Clinical characteristics of DPP confirmed yaws cases.
Fig 3.
Clinical lesions of DPP positive yaws cases.
Papilloma (A), single ulcer (B), squamous macules C), disseminated ulcer (D), plantar (E).
Fig 4.
Local clustering of yaws prevalence in Wassa Amenfi East and Aowin Districts, Ghana.
Map was generated using ArcGIS 10.7.1 (Esri Inc., Redlands, California, USA). The shapefiles for Ghana and the various regions obtained from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright, CC BY-SA 2.0) were utilized as data sources for plotting the map. Map data from © OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright. Not significant -areas with no significant clusters; High-High (HH) cluster- areas where high prevalence was surrounded by other high prevalence areas; Low-low (LL) cluster- areas with low prevalence adjacent to other low-prevalence areas, High-Low (HL) outlier- high prevalence areas bounded by low prevalence areas; and the Low-High (LH) outlier- areas with low prevalence adjacent to high prevalence areas. Areas of no significance were also determined based on the prevalence recorded in the survey.
Fig 5.
Kernel Density of yaws cases in Wassa Amenfi East and Aowin Districts, Ghana.
Map was generated using ArcGIS 10.7.1 (Esri Inc., Redlands, California, USA). The shapefiles for Ghana and the various regions obtained from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright, CC BY-SA 2.0) were utilized as data sources for plotting the map. Map data from © OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright. Color Gradient: Smooth transition from light blue (low density) to deep blue (high density), reflecting increasing intensity of cases per square kilometers.
Fig 6.
Hotspots and coldspots of yaws prevalence in Wassa Amenfi East and Aowin Districts, Ghana.
Map was generated using ArcGIS 10.7.1 (Esri Inc., Redlands, California, USA). The shapefiles for Ghana and the various regions obtained from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright, CC BY-SA 2.0) were utilized as data sources for plotting the map. Map data from © OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright. Light Blue- Cool spots, representing areas with low activity or sparse data points. Orange/Yellow: Moderate hotspots, indicating areas with intermediate activity or data point concentration. Dark Red: Hotspots with the highest intensity or concentration of activity. All at 90, 95 and 99% Confidence.
Fig 7.
Prediction of Yaws Prevalence in Unsampled areas in Wassa Amenfi East and Aowin Districts, Ghana.
Kernel Interpolation with Barrier Prediction of yaws prevalence in unsampled areas (A). Colour from blue to red indicates lowest through to highest predicted prevalence areas. Empirical Bayesian Kriging Prediction of yaws prevalence in unsampled areas in Wassa Amenfi East and Aowin Districts, Ghana (B). Colour from blue to red reflects the strength of Bayesian predictive probability. Maps were generated using ArcGIS 10.7.1 (Esri Inc., Redlands, California, USA). The shapefiles for Ghana and the various regions obtained from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright, CC BY-SA 2.0) were utilized as data sources for plotting the maps. Map data from © OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.