Browsing by Author "Campbell, G."

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Historical perspective and risk of multiple neglected tropical diseases in coastal Tanzania: Compositional and contextual determinants of disease risk
(Public Library of Science, 2015) Armah, F.A.; Quansah, R.; Luginaah, I.; Chuenpagdee, R.; Hambati, H.; Campbell, G.
Background: In the past decade, research on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) has intensified in response to the need to enhance community participation in health delivery, establish monitoring and surveillance systems, and integrate existing disease-specific treatment programs to control overlapping NTD burdens and detrimental effects. In this paper, we evaluated the geographical distribution of NTDs in coastal Tanzania. Methods and Findings: We also assessed the collective (compositional and contextual) factors that currently determine risks to multiple NTDs using a cross sectional survey of 1253 individuals in coastal Tanzania. The results show that the effect size in decreasing order of magnitude for non-binary predictors of NTD risks is as follows: NTD comorbidities > poverty > educational attainment > self-reported household quality of life > ethnicity. The multivariate analysis explained 95% of the variance in the relationship between NTD risks and the theoreticallyrelevant covariates. Compositional (biosocial and sociocultural) factors explained more variance at the neighbourhood level than at the regional level, whereas contextual factors, such as access to health services and household quality, in districts explained a large proportion of variance at the regional level but individually had modest statistical significance, demonstrating the complex interactions between compositional and contextual factors in generating NTD risks. Conclusions: NTD risks were inequitably distributed over geographic space, which has several important policy implications. First, it suggests that localities of high burden of NTDs are likely to diminish within statistical averages at higher (regional or national) levels. Second, it indicates that curative or preventive interventions will become more efficient provided they can be focused on the localities, particularly as populations in these localities are likely to be burdened by several NTDs simultaneously, further increasing the imperative of multi-disease interventions. © 2015 Armah et al.
Lack of conservation effort rapidly increases african great ape extinction risk
(Conservation Letters, 2012-01) Tranquilli, S.; Abedi-Lartey, M.; Amsini, F.; Arranz, L.; Asamoah, A.; Babafemi, O.; Barakabuye, N.; Campbell, G.; Chancellor, R.; Davenport, T.R.B.; Dunn, A.; Dupain, J.; Ellis, C.; Etoga, G.; Furuichi, T.; Gatti, S.; Ghiurghi, A.; Greengrass, E.; Hashimoto, C.; Hart, J.; Herbinger, I.; Hicks, T.C.; Holbech, L.H.; Huijbregts, B.; Imong, I.; Kumpel, N.; Maisels, F.; Marshall, P.; Nixon, S.; Normand, E.; Nziguyimpa, L.; Nzooh-Dogmo, Z.; Okon, D.T.; Plumptre, A.; Rundus, A.; Sunderland-Groves, J.; Todd, A.; Warren, Y.; Mundry, R.; Boesch, C.; Kuehl, H.
A network of resource management areas (RMAs) exists across tropical Africa to protect natural resources. However, many are poorly managed and weakly protected. We evaluated how the lack of conservation effort influences the extinction risk of African great apes. We compiled information on presence/ absence of primary (law enforcement guards) and secondary (tourism, research) conservation activities and nongovernmental conservation organizations (NGOs) support for 109 RMAs over the last 20 years. Along with these data, we collected environmental and anthropogenic variables, including recent records of ape presence/absence for all RMAs. As expected, law enforcement as a primary activity was the best predictor of ape survival rather than tourism or research as secondary activities. Furthermore, long-term NGO support had a significant positive influence on ape persistence. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of evaluating the relative importance of different conservation activities, an important step towards more evidence-based approaches in ape conservation. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Protected areas in tropical Africa: Assessing threats and conservation activities
(Public Library of Science, 2015) Tranquilli, S.; Abedi-Lartey, M.; Abernethy, K.; Amsini, F.; Asamoah, A.; Balangtaa, C.; Blake, S.; Bouanga, E.; Breuer, T.; Brncic, T.M.; Campbell, G.; Chancellor, R.; Chapman, C.A.
Numerous protected areas (PAs) have been created in Africa to safeguard wildlife and other natural resources. However, significant threats from anthropogenic activities and decline of wildlife populations persist, while conservation efforts in most PAs are still minimal. We assessed the impact level of the most common threats to wildlife within PAs in tropical Africa and the relationship of conservation activities with threat impact level. We collated data on 98 PAs with tropical forest cover from 15 countries across West, Central and East Africa. For this, we assembled information about local threats as well as conservation activities from published and unpublished literature, and questionnaires sent to long-term field workers. We constructed general linear models to test the significance of specific conservation activities in relation to the threat impact level. Subsistence and commercial hunting were identified as the most common direct threats to wildlife and found to be most prevalent in West and Central Africa. Agriculture and logging represented the most common indirect threats, and were most prevalent in West Africa. We found that the long-term presence of conservation activities (such as law enforcement, research and tourism) was associated with lower threat impact levels. Our results highlight deficiencies in the management effectiveness of several PAs across tropical Africa, and conclude that PA management should invest more into conservation activities with long-term duration.