Crossing the digital divide: the contribution of information technology to the professional performance of malaria researchers in Africa

Background: The US National Library of Medicine supports the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) through the design, implementation, and operation of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Communications Network (MIMCom.) MIMCom makes possible enhanced access to the Internet and to medical literature. Objectives: The main objectives of the present study were to examine the use of MIMCom supported information technology (IT) by scientists, students, and administrative personnel to facilitate communication, retrieve information, obtain documents, write proposals, and prepare papers for publication; and to determine the contribution of this intervention to their professional performance. Methods: The authors analyzed the contribution of enhanced Internet connectivity and access to electronic information resources to the performance of malaria research staff and their institutes through a cross-sectional questionnaire survey of 181 respondents at 14 health research centers in Africa. Separate reviews of bandwidth usage, requests for document delivery, and publications in peer reviewed journals support the data of the survey. Results: The MIMCom network makes a positive contribution to the performance of malaria researchers and support staff at the sites reviewed by improving e-mail exchange, access to published literature, and research proposal development and submission. Implications of these findings are discussed. Conclusion: By providing full access to the Internet and the resources of the WorldWide Web, MIMCom has been shown to be invaluable to malaria researchers and their institutes in Africa. This access has increased visibility of scientists in their respective institutions and provided opportunities for stronger engagement with the international scientific community. African Health Sciences Vol. 5 (3) 2005: pp. 246-25

The need for synergy and value creation in contemporary vector research and control

Contemporary research in the field of medical entomology is hampered by systems thinking, besides work processes and organizational structures that demand focus and inhibit creative and innovative initiatives. This leads to tunnel vision, limited lateral thinking, and forced attention to minutia with limited added value. PhD projects, in particular, are severely affected by this. Students focus on a piece of work for 3–4 years to find themselves an expert on a subject of limited importance before entering post-doc life. There are simple ways to encourage lateral thinking in science and open up strategic space for unconventional, exciting and stimulating research that matters.Here we focus on various examples of lateral approaches to create synergy (use or application of knowledge or practices from non-related fields) and subsequent added value (appropriation of that knowledge, practice or process to deliver a real benefit to your own field of research). We describe why research on genetically-engineered mosquitoes, in spite of absence of proof-of-principle, became widely considered as a potential break-through in disease control. Discarded approaches to reduce vector-host contact, for instance the use of physical barriers in house design, experience the opposite; it is hard to generate renewed interest for methods that have proven capable of substantially reducing transmission. Even larval control, with dramatic historical successes, suffers from high-tech scientific developments that seek to achieve the same goal. We cover the search for human kairomones for trap/bait development and biological control agents to control adult mosquitoes and the subsequent discovery of a fungal entomopathogen used against grasshoppers that kills mosquitoes; other examples of synergy and value creation are presented.<br/

Human health improvement in Sub-Saharan Africa through integrated management of arthropod transmitted diseases and natural resources.

A concept of an ecosystem approach to human health improvement in Sub-Saharan Africa is presented here. Three factors mainly affect the physical condition of the human body: the abiotic environment, vector-transmitted diseases, and natural resources. Our concept relies on ecological principles embedded in a social context and identifies three sets of subsystems for study and management: human disease subsystems, natural resource subsystems, and decision-support subsystems. To control human diseases and to secure food from resource subsystems including livestock or crops, integrated preventive approaches are preferred over exclusively curative and sectorial approaches. Environmental sustainability - the basis for managing matter and water flows - contributes to a healthy human environment and constitutes the basis for social sustainability. For planning and implementation of the human health improvement scheme, participatory decision-support subsystems adapted to the local conditions need to be designed through institutional arrangements. The applicability of this scheme is demonstrated in urban and rural Ethiopia

El Niño causes dramatic outbreak of Paederus dermatitis in East Africa

KeywordsPaederus sabaeus; Nairobi Fly; outbreak; El Niño; Paederus dermatitis; conjunctivitis; Nairobi; KenyaAbstarctAn outbreak of Paederus sabaeus rove beetles in Kenya during the 1997–1998 El Niño resulted in a dramatic increase of vesicular dermatitis in its capital Nairobi. The beetle, popularly called ‘Nairobi Fly’, contains a potent toxic fluid that causes epidermolysis and acute conjunctivitis. A cross-sectional epidemiological study involving 1, 208 Nairobi residents was conducted to determine the health impact of this outbreak. The results showed that one-third of the Nairobi population were infected during this period. The majority of the respondents reported lesions on exposed body parts above the shoulders. Disfiguring, painful blisters and skin rashes in and around the facial area had a strong personal and social impact. Policy makers and public health specialists need to recognize that outbreaks of insects of medical importance resulting from global climatic events require urgent remedial action.INTRODUCTIONModern human activities have an obvious negative impact on the environment and contribute to the irreversible alteration of the global climate. Evidence shows that successions of abnormal climatic events have a disturbing effect on the world's ecosystems (Epstein et al., 1998). Rise of temperatures and more frequent occurrence of extreme weather conditions alter the flora and affect the development of competitive insect species in certain parts of the world, causing unexpected insect explosions with consequences for human health (Dukes and Mooney, 1999)

Ecologists can enable communities to implement malaria vector control in Africa

Background: Integrated vector management (IVM) for malaria control requires ecological skills that are very scarce and rarely applied in Africa today. Partnerships between communities and academic ecologists can address this capacity deficit, modernize the evidence base for such approaches and enable future scale up. Methods: Community-based IVM programmes were initiated in two contrasting settings. On Rusinga Island, Western Kenya, community outreach to a marginalized rural community was achieved by University of Nairobi through a community-based organization. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Ilala Municipality established an IVM programme at grassroots level, which was subsequently upgraded and expanded into a pilot scale Urban Malaria Control Programme with support from national academic institutes. Results: Both programmes now access relevant expertise, funding and policy makers while the academic partners benefit from direct experience of community-based implementation and operational research opportunities. The communities now access up-to-date malaria-related knowledge and skills for translation into local action. Similarly, the academic partners have acquired better understanding of community needs and how to address them. Conclusion: Until sufficient evidence is provided, community-based IVM remains an operational research activity. Researchers can never directly support every community in Africa so community-based IVM strategies and tactics will need to be incorporated into undergraduate teaching programmes to generate sufficient numbers of practitioners for national scale programmes. Academic ecologists at African institutions are uniquely positioned to enable the application of practical environmental and entomological skills for malaria control by communities at grassroots level and should be supported to fulfil this neglected role