Seroepidemiological Studies of Arboviruses in Africa.

The literature on sero-epidemiological studies of flaviviral infections in the African continent is quite scarce. Much of the viral epidemiology studies have been focussing on diseases such as HIV/AIDS because of their sheer magnitude and impact on the lives of people in the various affected countries. Increasingly disease outbreaks caused by arboviruses such as the recent cases of chikungunya virus, dengue virus and yellow fever virus have prompted renewed interest in studying these viruses. International agencies from the US, several EU nations and China are starting to build collaborations to build capacity in many African countries together with established institutions to conduct these studies. The Tofo Advanced Study Week (TASW) was established to bring the best scientists from the world to the tiny seaside town of Praia do Tofo to rub shoulders with African virologists and discuss cutting-edge science and listen to the work of researchers in the field. In 2015 the 1st TASW focussed on Ebola virus. The collections of abstracts from participants at the 2nd TASW which focused on Dengue and Zika virus as well as presentations on other arboviruses are collated in this chapter.

A supervised land cover classification of a western Kenya lowland endemic for human malaria: associations of land cover with larval Anopheles habitats.

BACKGROUND: A supervised land cover classification was developed from very high resolution IKONOS satellite data and extensive ground truth sampling of a ca. 10 sq km malaria-endemic lowland in western Kenya. The classification was then applied to an investigation of distribution of larval Anopheles habitats. The hypothesis was that the distribution and abundance of aquatic habitats of larvae of various species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles is associated with identifiable landscape features. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The classification resulted in 7 distinguishable land cover types, each with a distinguishable vegetation pattern, was highly accurate (89%, Kappa statistic = 0.86), and had a low rate of omission and commission errors. A total of 1,198 habitats and 19,776 Anopheles larvae of 9 species were quantified in samples from a rainy season, and 184 habitats and 582 larvae from a dry season. Anopheles gambiae s.l. was the dominant species complex (51% of total) and A. arabiensis the dominant species. Agricultural land covers (mature maize fields, newly cultivated fields, and pastured grasslands) were positively associated with presence of larval habitats, and were located relatively close to stream channels; whilst nonagricultural land covers (short shrubs, medium shrubs, tall shrubs, and bare soil around residences) were negatively associated with presence of larval habitats and were more distant from stream channels. Number of larval habitats declined exponentially with distance from streams. IKONOS imagery was not useful in direct detection of larval habitats because they were small and turbid (resembling bare soil), but was useful in localization of them through statistical associations with specific land covers. CONCLUSION: A supervised classification of land cover types in rural, lowland, western Kenya revealed a largely human-modified and fragmented landscape consisting of agricultural and domestic land uses. Within it, larval habitats of Anopheles vectors of human malaria were associated with certain land cover types, of largely agricultural origin, and close to streams. Knowledge of these associations can inform malaria control to gather information on potential larval habitats more efficiently than by field survey and can do so over large areas.