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This paper explores the limits to participation in community-based approaches (CBAs) for rock art heritage management. The construction of a tourism development project at a rock art site (Wildebeest Kuil, Kimberley, South Africa) in 2001 involved two San communities in order to provide economic and cultural support. Based on the assumption that CBAs are closely linked to participation issues, which are themselves linked to past inequalities, this article analyses the multiple obstacles to community participation despite the goodwill of managers and highlights the limits of CBAs from a critical analytical perspective. To do so, we build on qualitative data from field observations and semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders. Hence, by drawing a conceptualized framework from the Wildebeest Kuil example in CBAs for heritage management, we suggest focusing on the conditions that CBAs impose on the community participation that justify them. Finally, this article draws lines toward a sustainable perspective between CBAs and community participation, and may be transferred to other case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Brown mussels exhibit a trans‐Atlantic distribution putatively caused by either native dispersal or artificial gene flow, likely in concert with the transport of enslaved people from Africa. Evolutionary history and demographic models of this widespread species may clarify how the present‐day distribution was impacted by natural versus artificial dispersal. Particularly, dating the timing of the South American/African split may determine whether the human slave trade likely impacted the contemporary distribution of brown mussels. Location: Coastal Brazil, Morocco, South Africa, and Mozambique. Taxon: Perna perna (Linnaeus 1758). Methods: We genotyped a total of 644 samples from 18 populations at 10 microsatellite loci. We estimated genetic structure with clustering algorithms in STRUCTURE and GENETIX. We estimated genetic distances by characterizing patterns of pair‐wise FST using the program FSTAT, evaluating differences among and between regions via AMOVA, and testing isolation by distance in IBDWS. To estimate and date the most likely pathway by which P. perna crossed the Atlantic Ocean we used Bayesian factors from thermodynamically heated coalescent simulations in the program MIGRATE‐n. Results: We found no general pattern of reduced or elevated levels of genetic diversity within any region across site or locus. We identified four genetic clusters: East South Africa (ESA), West South Africa (WSA), Brazil (BR) and North Africa (MO); FST ranged from 0.06 to 0.11 among regions and exhibited a significant pattern of isolation by distance. Migration models indicated that P. perna dispersed from WSA to MO and from there to BR of approximately 2,000 years. Main conclusions: Multiple lines of evidence suggest the Brazilian populations of P. perna have been a long‐standing native population, originating from northern Africa and are unlikely a consequence of the African slave trade. Although, human introduction cannot be ruled out South American P. perna populations exhibited genetic characteristics indicative of a divergent, isolated and established population, featuring the genetic signature expected for a native population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, a suspected outbreak of Rift Valley fever (RVF) was reported on a farm in the Bela-Bela area, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Seven calves died on the affected dairy farm, where no RVF vaccination programme was practised. No apparent clinical disease was reported in the other 300 cattle (33 calves included) or 200 sheep on the farm. During the outbreak, blood samples from 77.7% (233/300) of the cattle and 36.5% (73/200) of the sheep were collected on the affected farm and 55 blood samples were taken from cattle on a neighbouring farm. Eight weeks later, 78% of the cattle (234/300) and 42.5% of the sheep (85/200) were bled on the affected farm only. All sera were tested by an Immunoglobulin M (IgM)-capture Enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and by an indirect Immunoglobulin G (IgG) ELISA. Selected IgM-positive (n = 14), IgG-positive (n = 23) and samples negative for both IgM and IgG-specific antibodies against RVF virus (n = 19) were tested using the serum neutralisation test (SNT). Sera from IgM-positive (n = 14) and negative (n = 20) animals were also tested by a TaqMan polymerase chain reaction (PCR). On the affected farm, 7% (16/233) of the cattle were IgM-positive and 13.7% (32/233) IgG-positive at the first bleed and 2% were IgM-positive at the second bleed, whilst the number of cattle positive for IgG-specific antibodies increased by 21.3% compared with the first bleed. Only 1.4% of sheep were positive for both IgM and IgG antibodies at the first collection; at the second bleed, IgM-positive cases decreased to 1.2%, whilst IgG-positive cases increased to 2.4%. Whilst no IgM-positive cattle were found on the neighbouring farm, 5.5% of cattle were IgG-positive. The SNT confirmed most of the ELISA results, whilst PCR results were all negative. Although serology results indicated virus circulation on both farms, the negative PCR results demonstrated that the animals were not viraemic at the time they were sampled. The movement of infected mosquito vectors by wind over long distances into a low-lying area that favoured their breeding on the Bela-Bela farm may have led to an outbreak of the disease there, but the reason for the low level of virus circulation amongst susceptible animals remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sustainable Development Goals set a challenge for the elimination of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection as a public health concern by the year 2030. Deployment of a robust prophylactic vaccine and enhanced interventions for prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) are cornerstones of elimination strategy. However, in light of the estimated global burden of 290 million cases, enhanced efforts are required to underpin optimisation of public health strategy. Robust analysis of population epidemiology is particularly crucial for populations in Africa made vulnerable by HIV co-infection, poverty, stigma and poor access to prevention, diagnosis and treatment.Methods: We here set out to evaluate the current and future role of HBV vaccination and PMTCT as tools for elimination. We first investigated the current impact of paediatric vaccination in a cohort of children with and without HIV infection in Kimberley, South Africa. Second, we used these data to inform a new parsimonious model to simulate the ongoing impact of preventive interventions. By applying these two approaches in parallel, we are able to determine both the current impact of interventions, and the future projected outcome of ongoing preventive strategies over time.Results: Existing efforts have been successful in reducing paediatric prevalence of HBV infection in this setting to < 1%, demonstrating the success of the existing vaccine campaign. Our model predicts that, if consistently deployed, combination efforts of vaccination and PMTCT can significantly reduce population prevalence (HBsAg) by 2030, such that a major public health impact is possible even without achieving elimination. However, the prevalence of HBV e-antigen (HBeAg)-positive carriers will decline more slowly, representing a persistent population reservoir. We show that HIV co-infection significantly reduces titres of vaccine-mediated antibody, but has a relatively minor role in influencing the projected time to elimination. Our model can also be applied to other settings in order to predict impact and time to elimination based on specific interventions.Conclusions: Through extensive deployment of preventive strategies for HBV, significant positive public health impact is possible, although time to HBV elimination as a public health concern is likely to be substantially longer than that proposed by current goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The early COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa was highly heterogeneous looking at the epidemiological progression between major provinces. • Early transmission in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) was associated with multiple international introductions of SARS-CoV-2. • The dominating lineages during this time of the epidemic were B.1 and B, which mainly originated from Europe. • Evidence for transmission clusters during the first month of the epidemic suggested locally acquired infection. • A clustered outbreak was linked to a major hospital outbreak in Durban, which inflated the early mortality in KZN. The Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) was formed to investigate the introduction and understand the early transmission dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in South-Africa. This paper presents the first results from this group, which is a molecular epidemiological study of the first 21 SARS-CoV-2 whole genomes sampled in the first port of entry – KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) – during the first month of the epidemic. By combining this with calculations of the effective reproduction number (R), it aimed to shed light on the patterns of infections in South Africa. Two of the largest provinces – Gauteng and KZN – had a slow growth rate for the number of detected cases, while the epidemic spread faster in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. The estimates of transmission potential suggested a decrease towards R = 1 since the first cases and deaths, but a subsequent estimated R average of 1.39 between 6–18 May 2020. It was also demonstrated that early transmission in KZN was associated with multiple international introductions and dominated by lineages B1 and B. Evidence for locally acquired infections in a hospital in Durban within the first month of the epidemic was also provided. The COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa was very heterogeneous in its spatial dimension, with many distinct introductions of SARS-CoV2 in KZN and evidence of nosocomial transmission, which inflated early mortality in KZN. The epidemic at the local level was still developing and NGS-SA aimed to clarify the dynamics in South Africa and devise the most effective measures as the outbreak evolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]