Reducing Blindness from Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) in Argentina Through Collaboration, Advocacy and Policy Implementation.

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a largely avoidable cause of blindness in children worldwide, requiring high-quality neonatal care, early detection and treatment. In middle-income countries throughout Latin America, Eastern Europe and South Asia, there has been a rise in ROP blindness due to a combination of increased survival of preterm infants, resource-scarce medical environments and lack of policies, training and human resources. However, Argentina is an example of country where rates of ROP blindness have declined and ROP programmes have been successfully and effectively embedded within the health and legal system. The purpose of this study is to describe the activities and stakeholders, including Ministry of Health (MoH) and UNICEF, involved in the process, from recognition of an epidemic of ROP blindness to the development of national guidelines, policies and legislation for control. Using a retrospective mixed methods case study design, data on rates of severe ROP was collected from 13 neonatal intensive care units from 1999 to 2012, and on the proportion of children blind from ROP in nine blind schools in seven provinces. Legislative document review, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were conducted with neonatologists, ophthalmologists, neonatal nurses, parents, MoH officials, clinical societies, legislators and UNICEF officials in seven provinces. Results are presented combining the stages heuristic policy framework and Shiffman including: agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. By 2012, ROP had declined as a cause of blindness in children in schools for the blind as had rates of severe ROP needing treatment in the NICUs visited. Multiple factors played a role in reducing blindness from ROP in Argentina and successfully coordinating its control including national advocacy, leadership, legislation and international collaboration. Lessons learned in Argentina can potentially be scaled to other LMICs in Latin America and beyond with further context-specific research

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

Política e economia na ação coletiva: uma crítica etnográfica às premissas dicotômicas

Este artigo procura, distanciando-se dos modelos formais que têm servido de eixo para os estudos sobre ação coletiva e movimentos sociais, restituir a dimensão vivida do engajamento político. Com base em análise etnográfica centrada num conjunto de bairros da Grande Buenos Aires, explora os modos - múltiplos e heterogêneos - como as pessoas se envolvem nos chamados movimentos piqueteros, e indica que essas experiências ganham inteligibilidade ao serem inscritas numa trama mais ampla de relações e possibilidades de vida. A partir de uma perspectiva figuracional, o texto discute alguns pressupostos da literatura sobre organizações piqueteras, em particular, e protestos sociais, em geral; questiona a dicotomia entre razão material e razão político-moral com que se tem abordado a questão das motivações da ação coletiva; desconfia de uma oposição rígida entre Estado e movimentos sociais, apontando para o papel criador - e não só cooptador - das políticas estatais; e, finalmente, propõe sociologizar o lugar do "prazer de fazer" na origem e na continuidade do engajamento político.<br>Distancing itself from the formal models that have served as an axis for studies of collective action and social movements, this article seeks to reinstate the lived dimension of political engagement. Basing itself on the ethnographic analysis of a set of neighbourhoods in Greater Buenos Aires, it explores the multiple and heterogeneous ways in which people become involved in the so-called movimentos piqueteros. It indicates that these experiences become intelligible through their inscription in a wider plot of relations and possibilities. Starting from a figurational perspective, the text discusses some of the assumptions of the literature on piquetero organization, in particular, and social movements more generally; it questions that dichotomy between material reason and politico-moral reason through which the question of the motivations of collective action have been addressed; it is mistrustful of a rigid opposition between the State and social movements, pointing to the creative - and not merely co-optive - character of state policies; and, finally, it proposes to sociologize the locus of the "the pleasure of doing" in the origin and continuity of political engagement

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.William F. Laurance, D. Carolina Useche, Julio Rendeiro, Margareta Kalka, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Sean P. Sloan, Susan G. Laurance, Mason Campbell, Kate Abernethy, Patricia Alvarez, Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez, Peter Ashton, Julieta Benítez-Malvido, Allard Blom, Kadiri S. Bobo, Charles H. Cannon, Min Cao, Richard Carroll, Colin Chapman, Rosamond Coates, Marina Cords, Finn Danielsen, Bart De Dijn, Eric Dinerstein, Maureen A. Donnelly, David Edwards, Felicity Edwards, Nina Farwig, Peter Fashing, Pierre-Michel Forget, Mercedes Foster, George Gale, David Harris, Rhett Harrison, John Hart, Sarah Karpanty, W. John Kress, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Willis Logsdon, Jon Lovett, William Magnusson, Fiona Maisels, Andrew R. Marshall, Deedra McClearn, Divya Mudappa, Martin R. Nielsen, Richard Pearson, Nigel Pitman, Jan van der Ploeg, Andrew Plumptre, John Poulsen, Mauricio Quesada, Hugo Rainey, Douglas Robinson, Christiane Roetgers, Francesco Rovero, Frederick Scatena, Christian Schulze, Douglas Sheil, Thomas Struhsaker, John Terborgh, Duncan Thomas, Robert Timm, J. Nicolas Urbina-Cardona, Karthikeyan Vasudevan, S. Joseph Wright, Juan Carlos Arias-G., Luzmila Arroyo, Mark Ashton, Philippe Auzel, Dennis Babaasa, Fred Babweteera, Patrick Baker, Olaf Banki, Margot Bass, Inogwabini Bila-Isia, Stephen Blake, Warren Brockelman, Nicholas Brokaw, Carsten A. Brühl, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Jung-Tai Chao, Jerome Chave, Ravi Chellam, Connie J. Clark, José Clavijo, Robert Congdon, Richard Corlett, H. S. Dattaraja, Chittaranjan Dave, Glyn Davies, Beatriz de Mello Beisiegel, Rosa de Nazaré Paes da Silva, Anthony Di Fiore, Arvin Diesmos, Rodolfo Dirzo, Diane Doran-Sheehy, Mitchell Eaton, Louise Emmons, Alejandro Estrada, Corneille Ewango, Linda Fedigan, François Feer, Barbara Fruth, Jacalyn Giacalone Willis, Uromi Goodale, Steven Goodman, Juan C. Guix, Paul Guthiga, William Haber, Keith Hamer, Ilka Herbinger, Jane Hill, Zhongliang Huang, I Fang Sun, Kalan Ickes, Akira Itoh, Natália Ivanauskas, Betsy Jackes, John Janovec, Daniel Janzen, Mo Jiangming, Chen Jin, Trevor Jones, Hermes Justiniano, Elisabeth Kalko, Aventino Kasangaki, Timothy Killeen, Hen-biau King, Erik Klop, Cheryl Knott, Inza Koné, Enoka Kudavidanage, José Lahoz da Silva Ribeiro, John Lattke, Richard Laval, Robert Lawton, Miguel Leal, Mark Leighton, Miguel Lentino, Cristiane Leonel, Jeremy Lindsell, Lee Ling-Ling, K. Eduard Linsenmair, Elizabeth Losos, Ariel Lugo, Jeremiah Lwanga, Andrew L. Mack, Marlucia Martins, W. Scott McGraw, Roan McNab, Luciano Montag, Jo Myers Thompson, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, Michiko Nakagawa, Sanjay Nepal, Marilyn Norconk, Vojtech Novotny, Sean O'Donnell, Muse Opiang, Paul Ouboter, Kenneth Parker, N. Parthasarathy, Kátia Pisciotta, Dewi Prawiradilaga, Catherine Pringle, Subaraj Rajathurai, Ulrich Reichard, Gay Reinartz, Katherine Renton, Glen Reynolds, Vernon Reynolds, Erin Riley, Mark-Oliver Rödel, Jessica Rothman, Philip Round, Shoko Sakai, Tania Sanaiotti, Tommaso Savini, Gertrud Schaab, John Seidensticker, Alhaji Siaka, Miles R. Silman, Thomas B. Smith, Samuel Soares de Almeida, Navjot Sodhi, Craig Stanford, Kristine Stewart, Emma Stokes, Kathryn E. Stoner, Raman Sukumar, Martin Surbeck, Mathias Tobler, Teja Tscharntke, Andrea Turkalo, Govindaswamy Umapathy, Merlijn van Weerd, Jorge Vega Rivera, Meena Venkataraman, Linda Venn, Carlos Verea, Carolina Volkmer de Castilho, Matthias Waltert, Benjamin Wang, David Watts, William Weber, Paige West, David Whitacre, Ken Whitney, David Wilkie, Stephen Williams, Debra D. Wright, Patricia Wright, Lu Xiankai, Pralad Yonzon & Franky Zamzan