Social determinants of health among people working on informal gold mines in French Guiana: a multicentre cross-sectional survey.

INTRODUCTION: Social determinants of health, such as living and working conditions, economical and environmental context and access to care, combine to impact the health of individuals and communities. In French Guiana (FG), the persons working in informal artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the rainforest are a particularly vulnerable population which lives in precarious conditions and far from the health system. Previous studies have demonstrated their high morbidity due to infectious diseases. This study aims to describe the social determinants of health in this specific population. METHODS: This international multicentre cross-sectional survey included people working on the informal FG gold mines at the crossing points located at both borders with Suriname and Brazil. After collecting written informed consent, a structured questionnaire was administered. RESULTS: From September to December 2022, 539 gold miners were included. These poorly educated migrants, mainly from Brazil (99.1%) did not have access to drinkable water (95.4%), lived in close contact with wild fauna by hunting, eating bushmeat or being bitten and were exposed to mercury by inhalation (58.8%) or ingestion (80.5%). They report frequent accidents (13.5%) and chronic treatment interruptions (26.6% of the 11.9% reporting chronic treatment). Half of them considered themselves in good health (56.4%). CONCLUSION: This study shows a singular combination of adverse exposures of gold miners working in FG such as zoonoses, heavy metal poisoning, aggression of wild fauna. For ethical as well as public health reasons, actions towards health equity must be considered at different levels: individual, community, environmental, systemic and global level. As end users of minerals, we must assume our responsibilities for the well-being of the extractors by including health in political decisions to engage together in global health. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05540470.

Stakeholder participation, indicators, assessment, and decision-making: applying adaptive management at the watershed scale.

Climate change, population growth, and declining federal budgets are threatening the health of ecosystems, and the services they provide. Under these changing conditions, managing landscapes and resources assumes new and unprecedented challenges. Adaptive management has been identified as a natural resource management approach that allows practitioners to incorporate change and uncertainty into decision-making through an iterative process that involves long-term monitoring and continued review and adjustment of management actions. However, the success of these efforts in watershed health relies on the collective and sustained monitoring of indicators, which is seldom studied. The purpose of this analysis is to examine (1) the practical challenge of choosing a list of indicators for long-term monitoring, (2) the negotiation process among stakeholders around the selection and interpretation of indicators, and (3) the communication tools that can be used to convey the assessment's results and findings. To do this, we analyze our ongoing work in the Cienega Watershed in southern Arizona. Our analysis shows that the selective use of indicators, regular assessment and review, and establishment of partnerships among stakeholders are all important elements in establishing effective adaptive management efforts. The selection of indicators and data sources is a moving target that requires regular consensus and review among stakeholders. The assessment itself is also a powerful engagement tool with the public at large, providing legitimacy and support to land management decision-making. Here, we outline some lessons learned that can be transferred to other cases and identify potential barriers for engagement, decision-making, and project success.

In a life full of risks, COVID-19 makes little difference. Responses to COVID-19 among mobile migrants in gold mining areas in Suriname and French Guiana.

Worldwide, the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 disproportionally affect vulnerable groups in society. This paper assesses responses to, and impacts of, the pandemic among mobile migrant populations who work in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) in Suriname and French Guiana. These populations are characterized by poverty, informal or illegal status, and limited access to health care and information. Field research in Suriname (November 2020-January 2021) and French Guiana (January, May, June 2021) included qualitative interviews, informal conversations and observations, and a quantitative survey with 361 men and women in ASGM communities. Contrary to reports from the ASGM sector elsewhere, interviewed inhabitants of ASGM areas in Suriname and French Guiana showed little concern about COVID-19. Respondents reported feeling safer in the forest where they work than in the urban areas or in their home country. Trust in home remedies and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals further reduced anxiety about the pandemic. Three-quarters of survey respondents reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had not affected their work or income at all. The researchers conclude that in these remote Amazon communities, responses to COVID-19 mirror attitudes and behavior vis-à-vis malaria and other health risks: self-medicate, ignore, and pray. Living on the margins of society mitigates the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, as containment measures are not applied to these socially invisible populations. Whereas the urban poor are severely hit by the pandemic, this hidden population benefits from high gold prices, an outdoors lifestyle, and traditional resourcefulness in dealing with a life full of risks.

Characterizing amplitude and frequency modulation cues in natural soundscapes: A pilot study on four habitats of a biosphere reserve.

Natural soundscapes correspond to the acoustical patterns produced by biological and geophysical sound sources at different spatial and temporal scales for a given habitat. This pilot study aims to characterize the temporal-modulation information available to humans when perceiving variations in soundscapes within and across natural habitats. This is addressed by processing soundscapes from a previous study [Krause, Gage, and Joo. (2011). Landscape Ecol. 26, 1247] via models of human auditory processing extracting modulation at the output of cochlear filters. The soundscapes represent combinations of elevation, animal, and vegetation diversity in four habitats of the biosphere reserve in the Sequoia National Park (Sierra Nevada, USA). Bayesian statistical analysis and support vector machine classifiers indicate that: (i) amplitude-modulation (AM) and frequency-modulation (FM) spectra distinguish the soundscapes associated with each habitat; and (ii) for each habitat, diurnal and seasonal variations are associated with salient changes in AM and FM cues at rates between about 1 and 100 Hz in the low (<0.5 kHz) and high (>1-3 kHz) audio-frequency range. Support vector machine classifications further indicate that soundscape variations can be classified accurately based on these perceptually inspired representations.

Investigation of a possible malaria epidemic in an illegal gold mine in French Guiana: an original approach in the remote Amazonian forest.

BACKGROUND: In April 2017, Suriname's Ministry of Health alerted French Guiana's Regional Health Agency (RHA) about an increase of imported malaria cases among people coming from an illegal gold mining site called Sophie, in French Guiana, a French overseas territory located in the Amazonian forest. METHODS: Due to safety issues and the remoteness of Sophie, the RHA requested the collaboration of the French Armed Forces for the epidemiological investigation. A medical unit, and six soldiers to ensure the security of the mission, were transported by helicopter. RESULTS: During the investigation, two malaria episodes were diagnosed among 46 persons. Twenty-six of them were from Sophie, where PCR-Plasmodium prevalence was estimated at 60% (15/26). This result was concordant with previous studies revealing high malaria endemicity in the gold miner population. The increase of imported cases in Suriname may have resulted from decreased access to under-the-counter anti-malarials and increased migration of gold miners to Suriname following a decline of the profitability of gold mining in a context of increased repression against illegal mining by the French army. CONCLUSION: This investigation of a suspicious malaria epidemic confirms the importance of malaria among illegal gold miners. Their mobility along the Guiana Shield and their health-seeking behaviour are likely to spread malaria in populations for which significant efforts are undertaken to fight against this disease. Fighting malaria in this population remains more relevant than ever. A pilot study (Malakit project) is currently in progress to evaluate the efficacy of kits for self-diagnosis and self-treatment.

The DURAMAZ indicator system: a cross-disciplinary comparative tool for assessing ecological and social changes in the Amazon.

During the last 20 years, the Amazon region has been at the same time a place of massive ecological and social change and a laboratory of experiments aimed at promoting sustainable development. Policies and project initiatives involving diverse social groups and environmental contexts have been implemented across the region. They have resulted in mixed outcomes and trade-offs between social and environmental dimensions, making their impact at the local level difficult to assess and their successes difficult to generalize. The objective of the DURAMAZ research project was to provide a better understanding of these impacts. It produced a multi-dimensional indicator system designed to allow a holistic view of sustainable development at local and subregional levels and a comparative perspective across 12 research sites, from an isolated indigenous village to smallholders and agribusiness areas in Mato Grosso. The results of the first observation campaign (2007-2009) show that despite the claim of promoting sustainable development, no project was able to untie the 'Gordian knot' of development in the Amazon. Communities continue to face the old dilemma of either enjoying a preserved ecosystem but enduring adverse life conditions, or enjoying better living at the expense of forest cover. Another finding is that the subregional context is very important in shaping the impacts of regional policies. Thus, the same policy will not always have the same effect, depending on in which context it is applied. Finally, we found that cultural factors and a sense of place play a more important role than economic factors when it comes to the way people evaluate their own situation. This research provides the basis for a second phase of the project (2012-2016) in which we will continue to expand our sample and to refine our methodologies with the goal of transforming the initiative into a network of observatories of sustainable development in the Amazon.