Data from: Global distribution maps of the Leishmaniases

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.