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Increasing the production of meat and milk within sub-Saharan Africa should provide significant food security benefits. However, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions represent a challenge, as cattle production in the region typically has high emissions intensity (EI), i.e., high rates of GHG emissions per unit of output. The high EI is caused by the relatively low production efficiencies in the region, which are in turn partly due to endemic cattle diseases. In theory, improved disease control should increase the efficiency and decrease the emissions intensity of livestock production; however quantitative analysis of the potential GHG mitigation effects of improved disease control in Africa is lacking. This paper seeks to respond to this by using a hybrid modelling approach to quantify the production and emissions effects of removing trypanosomiasis from East African cattle production systems. The emissions are quantified for each cattle production system using an excel version of GLEAM, the Food and Agriculture Organization's Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model. The results indicate that removing trypanosomiasis leads to a reduction in the emissions intensity per unit of protein produced of between 0% and 8%, driven mainly by the increases in milk yields and cow fertility rates. Despite the limitations, it is argued that the approach provides considerable scope for modelling the GHG impacts of disease interventions.

Nella premessa viene evidenziata l’attualità di Raffaele Mattioli sia per l’ampiezza intelligente dalle sue riflessioni economiche con riferimento a temi di sottosviluppo e sviluppo nel contesto geo-economico, sociale e istituzionale che per il richiamo che Mattioli fa alla responsabilità dei Paesi avanzati per la promozione (non assistenzalistica) dello sviluppo dei Paesi arretrati attraverso una crescente integrazione economica internazionale postbellica.

We examine the recent West African Ebola outbreak from a Structural One Health perspective. We incorporate historical trajectories of economic exploitation and structural violence into the ecology of the disease, proposing globalization-led shifts in regional oil palm production served as a conduit through which a forest viral variant spilled over into humans. We deploy, and spatialize, a stochastic extinction model that offers a framework in which to explore the roles in which to explore the roles multinational mining, logging and monoculture agriculture play in destroying the inherent ecosystemic “friction” that blocks local disease emergence., SCOPUS: ch.b, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

A recent study introduced a vaccine that controls Ebola Makona, the Zaire ebolavirus variant that has infected 28,000 in West Africa. Here we propose even such successful advances are insufficient for many emergent diseases. We review work hypothesizing Makona, phenotypically similar to much smaller outbreaks, emerged out of shifts in land use brought about by neoliberal economics. The epidemiological consequences demand a new science that explicitly addresses the foundational processes underlying multispecies health, including the deep-time histories, cultural infrastructure, and global economic geographies driving disease emergence. The approach, for instance, reverses the standard public health practice of segregating emergency responses and the structural context from which outbreaks originate. In Ebola’s case, regional neoliberalism may affix the stochastic “friction”of ecological relationships imposed by the forest across populations, which, when above a threshold, keeps the virus from lining up transmission above replacement. Export-led logging, mining, and intensive agriculture may depress such functional noise, permitting novel spillovers larger forces of infection. Mature outbreaks meanwhile can continue to circulate in the face of even efficacious vaccines. More research on these integral explanations is required, but the narrow albeit welcome success of the vaccine may be used to limit support of such a program., SCOPUS: ch.b, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

SCOPUS: no.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

PR, IFPRI1; HarvestChoice; CRP7, EPTD, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), The Atlas of African Agriculture Research & Development is a multifaceted resource that high­lights the ubiquitous nature of smallholder agriculture in Africa; the many factors shaping the location, nature, and performance of agricultural enterprises; and the strong interde­pendencies among farming, natural resource stocks and flows, rural infrastructure, and the well-being of the poor.

PR, IFPRI1, EPTD, Using the Horn of Africa as an example, the maps illustrate different steps in a methodology developed to estimate and map the economic benefits to livestock keepers of controlling a disease (Shaw et al. 2014). Cattle are first assigned to different production systems as shown in Map 1, illustrating for example, where mixed farming is heavily dependent on the use of draft oxen in Ethiopia, areas of Sudan and South Sudan where oxen use is much lower, and the strictly pastoral areas of Somalia and Kenya. Information on the location of cattle and production systems is combined with the distribution of tsetse fly species in the area (Map 2) to estimate the presence and absence of trypanosomosis, a parasitic disease transmitted by the tsetse fly. Herd growth and spread is modelled for the current situation, and for the simulated removal of trypanosomosis.

The two classical forms of human trypanoso- moses are sleeping sickness due to Trypanosoma brucei gambiense or T. brucei rhodesiense , and Chagas disease due to T. cruzi . However, a number of atypical human infections caused by other T. species (or sub-species) have been reported, namely due to T. brucei brucei , T. vivax , T. congolense , T. evansi , T. lewisi , and T. lewisi -like. These cases are reviewed here. Some infections were transient in nature, while others required treatments that were successful in most cases, although two cases were fatal. A recent case of infection due to T. evansi was related to a lack of apolipoprotein L-I, but T. lewisi infections were not related to immunosuppression or specific human genetic profiles. Out of 19 patients, eight were confirmed between 1974 and 2010, thanks to improved molecular techniques. However, the number of cases of atypical human trypanosomoses might be underestimated. Thus, improvement, evaluation of new diagnostic tests, and field investigations are required for detection and confirmation of these atypical cases.

Background: An integrated strategy of intervention against tsetse flies was implemented in the Upper West Region of Ghana (9.62u-11.00u N, 1.40u-2.76u W), covering an area of <18,000 km2 within the framework of the Pan-African Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Eradication Campaign. Two species were targeted: Glossina tachinoides and Glossina palpalis gambiensis. Methodology/Principal Findings: The objectives were to test the potentiality of the sequential aerosol technique (SAT) to eliminate riverine tsetse species in a challenging subsection (dense tree canopy and high tsetse densities) of the total sprayed area (6,745 km2) and the subsequent efficacy of an integrated strategy including ground spraying (<100 km2), insecticide treated targets (20,000) and insecticide treated cattle (45,000) in sustaining the results of tsetse suppression in the whole intervention area. The aerial application of low-dosage deltamethrin aerosols (0.33-0.35 g a.i/ha) was conducted along the three main rivers using five custom designed fixed-wings Turbo thrush aircraft. The impact of SAT on tsetse densities was monitored using 30 biconical traps deployed from two weeks before until two weeks after the operations. Results of the SAT monitoring indicated an overall reduction rate of 98% (from a pre-intervention mean apparent density per trap per day (ADT) of 16.7 to 0.3 at the end of the fourth and last cycle). One year after the SAT operations, a second survey using 200 biconical traps set in 20 sites during 3 weeks was conducted throughout the intervention area to measure the impact of the integrated control strategy. Both target species were still detected, albeit at very low densities (ADT of 0.27 inside sprayed blocks and 0.10 outside sprayed blocks). Conclusions/Significance: The SAT operations failed to achieve elimination in the monitored section, but the subsequent integrated strategy maintained high levels of suppression throughout the intervention area, which will contribute to i

info:eu-repo/semantics/published