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The unmet need of organ transplantation in Africa

Awuah WA, Ng JC, Bulut HI, Nazir A, Tenkorang PO, Yarlagadda R, et al.

Int J Surg, 2023 Mar 01;109(3):519-520.
PMID: 36927835 DOI: 10.1097/JS9.0000000000000025
Matched MeSH terms: Africa
Ailing neurosurgical services in rural Africa

Awuah WA, Adebusoye FT, Tenkorang PO, Mehta A, Mustapha MJ, Debrah AF, et al.

Int J Surg, 2023 Mar 01;109(3):227-229.
PMID: 36906787 DOI: 10.1097/JS9.0000000000000020
Matched MeSH terms: Africa
African care for congenital central nervous system disorders: Falling far short of global management standards?

Wireko AA, Ohenewaa Tenkorang P, Fosuah Debrah A, Akin-Olugbemi T, Yarlagadda R, Mehta A, et al.

Int J Surg, 2023 Mar 01;109(3):534-535.
PMID: 36928287 DOI: 10.1097/JS9.0000000000000011
Matched MeSH terms: Africa
Unheard voices of global surgery - trauma services in sub-Saharan Africa: a correspondence

Mehta A, Wireko AA, Ohenewaa Tenkorang P, Ng JC, Rahman TA, Sikora V, et al.

Int J Surg, 2023 Mar 01;109(3):521-522.
PMID: 36906789 DOI: 10.1097/JS9.0000000000000145
Matched MeSH terms: Africa South of the Sahara
Fulltext The state of African surgical research capacity: highlighting the current efforts, challenges, and recommendations - Editorial

Wireko AA, Ohenewaa Tenkorang P, Tope Adebusoye F, Mehta A, Cheng Ng J, Yaa Asieduwaa O, et al.

Int J Surg, 2023 Feb 01;109(2):91-93.
PMID: 36799813 DOI: 10.1097/JS9.0000000000000216
Matched MeSH terms: Africa
World Health Organization (WHO)'s Intersectoral Global Action Plan (IGAP); implications for Asian and African countries

Wasay M, Younis S, Charway-Felli A, Basri H

J Neurol Sci, 2023 Jan 15;444:120499.
PMID: 36450220 DOI: 10.1016/j.jns.2022.120499
Matched MeSH terms: Africa/epidemiology
The Middle East and North Africa Diagnosis and Management Guidelines for Inborn Errors of Immunity

Baris S, Abolhassani H, Massaad MJ, Al-Nesf M, Chavoshzadeh Z, Keles S, et al.

J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract, 2023 Jan;11(1):158-180.e11.
PMID: 36265766 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaip.2022.10.003

Human inborn errors of immunity (IEI) are a group of 485 distinct genetic disorders affecting children and adults. Signs and symptoms of IEI are heterogeneous, and accurate diagnosis can be challenging and depends on the available human expertise and laboratory resources. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has an increased prevalence of IEI because of the high rate of consanguinity with a predominance of autosomal recessive disorders. This area also exhibits more severe disease phenotypes compared with other regions, probably due to the delay in diagnosis. The MENA-IEI registry network has designed protocols and guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of IEI, taking into consideration the variable regional expertise and resources. These guidelines are primarily meant to improve the care of patients within the region, but can also be followed in other regions with similar patient populations.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa, Northern/epidemiology
Fulltext Spatial correlation network characteristics of embodied carbon transfer in global agricultural trade

Wang G, Guo Q, Zhou X, Zhang F

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 2023 Jan;30(1):2315-2328.
PMID: 35930151 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-022-22337-w

Agricultural carbon emission is an important cause of climate change, and the carbon transfer caused by agricultural trade is a key area related to carbon emissions of all countries. Based on the Eora database, this paper aims to constructs a multi-region input-output database of 185 countries or regions, analyzes a spatial correlation network of embodied net carbon transfer in global agricultural trade by using UCINET, selects multi-dimensional network measurement indicators, and comprehensively studies the global evolution characteristics and functional features of network plate role of embodied carbon transfer in the global agricultural trade. The result shows that the embodied net carbon transfer network of global agricultural trade is densely connected, the spatial correlation spillover effect is significant, and the edge of the network core structure is clear. On the one hand, the top four countries or regions in terms of embodied carbon outflow in agricultural trade are the USA, Australia, Vietnam, and China. On the other hand, the top four countries or regions of embodied carbon inflow are Malaysia, Central Africa, Singapore, and Serbia. From the perspective of outdegree, indegree, proximity centrality, and intermediary centrality, Cambodia, the Netherlands, Vietnam, Ghana, and South Africa, with the high frequency of the shortest path of the globally embodied net carbon transfer network, have a strong influence and linking facility in spatial correlation and have a strong control ability to the spatial correlation of other countries or regions. The embodied carbon emission network of global agricultural trade can be divided into four sectors: main spillover, two-way spillover, broker, and main benefit. The main spillover segment, constituted by the USA, India, Germany, and China, has significant embodied carbon spillover effects on the internal segment and other segments. It is the main embodied carbon spillover sector of embodied net carbon transfer of global agricultural trade. Countries should reasonably allocate the responsibility of carbon reduction according to the trading embodied carbon transfer and made efforts to optimize the export structure of agricultural products.

Matched MeSH terms: South Africa
Fulltext Widening the lens of population-based health research to climate change impacts and adaptation: the climate change and health evaluation and response system (CHEERS)

Barteit S, Sié A, Zabré P, Traoré I, Ouédraogo WA, Boudo V, et al.

Front Public Health, 2023;11:1153559.
PMID: 37304117 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1153559

BACKGROUND: Climate change significantly impacts health in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), exacerbating vulnerabilities. Comprehensive data for evidence-based research and decision-making is crucial but scarce. Health and Demographic Surveillance Sites (HDSSs) in Africa and Asia provide a robust infrastructure with longitudinal population cohort data, yet they lack climate-health specific data. Acquiring this information is essential for understanding the burden of climate-sensitive diseases on populations and guiding targeted policies and interventions in LMICs to enhance mitigation and adaptation capacities.
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this research is to develop and implement the Change and Health Evaluation and Response System (CHEERS) as a methodological framework, designed to facilitate the generation and ongoing monitoring of climate change and health-related data within existing Health and Demographic Surveillance Sites (HDSSs) and comparable research infrastructures.
METHODS: CHEERS uses a multi-tiered approach to assess health and environmental exposures at the individual, household, and community levels, utilizing digital tools such as wearable devices, indoor temperature and humidity measurements, remotely sensed satellite data, and 3D-printed weather stations. The CHEERS framework utilizes a graph database to efficiently manage and analyze diverse data types, leveraging graph algorithms to understand the complex interplay between health and environmental exposures.
RESULTS: The Nouna CHEERS site, established in 2022, has yielded significant preliminary findings. By using remotely-sensed data, the site has been able to predict crop yield at a household level in Nouna and explore the relationships between yield, socioeconomic factors, and health outcomes. The feasibility and acceptability of wearable technology have been confirmed in rural Burkina Faso for obtaining individual-level data, despite the presence of technical challenges. The use of wearables to study the impact of extreme weather on health has shown significant effects of heat exposure on sleep and daily activity, highlighting the urgent need for interventions to mitigate adverse health consequences.
CONCLUSION: Implementing the CHEERS in research infrastructures can advance climate change and health research, as large and longitudinal datasets have been scarce for LMICs. This data can inform health priorities, guide resource allocation to address climate change and health exposures, and protect vulnerable communities in LMICs from these exposures.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa
Fulltext Graph-based extractive text summarization method for Hausa text

Bichi AA, Samsudin R, Hassan R, Hasan LRA, Ado Rogo A

PLoS One, 2023;18(5):e0285376.
PMID: 37159449 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285376

Automatic text summarization is one of the most promising solutions to the ever-growing challenges of textual data as it produces a shorter version of the original document with fewer bytes, but the same information as the original document. Despite the advancements in automatic text summarization research, research involving the development of automatic text summarization methods for documents written in Hausa, a Chadic language widely spoken in West Africa by approximately 150,000,000 people as either their first or second language, is still in early stages of development. This study proposes a novel graph-based extractive single-document summarization method for Hausa text by modifying the existing PageRank algorithm using the normalized common bigrams count between adjacent sentences as the initial vertex score. The proposed method is evaluated using a primarily collected Hausa summarization evaluation dataset comprising of 113 Hausa news articles on ROUGE evaluation toolkits. The proposed approach outperformed the standard methods using the same datasets. It outperformed the TextRank method by 2.1%, LexRank by 12.3%, centroid-based method by 19.5%, and BM25 method by 17.4%.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa, Western
Fulltext Monkeypox Virus and Other Emerging Outbreaks: An Overview and Future Perspective

Hamdana AH, Mohsin H, Habib Tharwani Z, Masood W, Furqana AQ, Sohail A, et al.

Inquiry, 2023;60:469580231175437.
PMID: 37190997 DOI: 10.1177/00469580231175437

Monkeypox (MPX) is a zoonotic disease caused by the MPX virus from the poxviridae family of orthopoxviruses. Typically, endemic in central and west Africa, it has now become a matter of concern since cases have been reported in non-endemic countries around mid-June 2022, especially in the European region, with the transmission not related to travel. The diagnosis is made by PCR testing of the skin lesions. Even though treatment is symptomatic, antiretrovirals, such as tecovirimat, are used in severe cases. Vaccination with second and third generation vaccines is approved for prophylaxis in high risk individuals. Unfortunately, these options of treatment and prevention are only available in high income countries at the moment. This review, through a thorough literature search of articles from 2017 onward, focuses on epidemiology, clinical manifestations, challenges, treatment, prevention and control of MPX virus and how they can be corelated with other viral outbreaks including COVID-19, Acute Hepatitis of unknown origin, Measles and Dengue, to better predict and therefore prevent its transmission. The previous COVID-19 pandemic increased the disease burden on healthcare infrastructure of low-middle income countries, therefore, this recent MPX outbreak calls for a joint effort from healthcare authorities, political figures, and NGOs to combat the disease and prevent its further spread not only in high income but also in middle- and low-income countries.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa, Western
Patient Care and Treatment Strategies for Skin Diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa: Role of Traditional and Western Medicines

Sharma A, Sundaram S, Malviya R, Verma S, Fuloria NK, Fuloria S, et al.

Infect Disord Drug Targets, 2023;23(3):e190922208916.
PMID: 36121085 DOI: 10.2174/1871526522666220919105643

The perspective of the people of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) toward both traditional and western healthcare systems varies. The goal of the current study is to examine the SSA's unique skin disease health care system. This study comprises numerous research that sought to examine how the general public feels about the SSA's current healthcare system. In this review, common skin conditions, such as atopic dermatitis, buruli ulcers, dermatophytosis, and scabies, are addressed. According to this report, government agencies must pay particular attention to skin illnesses in SSA and raise public awareness. Availability of medical care, socioeconomic factors, degree of education, and other factors influence patients' attitudes toward traditional and western health care differently in different geographic areas. Facts suggest that self-medication is the preference of the majority of patients before seeking dermatological care. The present study concludes that the magnitude of skin diseases is neglected or underestimated in many regions of SSA. Also, western healthcare facilities of many regions of SSA are not up to the mark. The present study recommends that proper access to the health care system and awareness about skin diseases through various government programs can be helpful in the regulation of skin disorders among people of SSA.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa South of the Sahara/epidemiology
Fulltext Effectiveness of health education interventions to improve malaria knowledge and insecticide-treated nets usage among populations of sub-Saharan Africa: systematic review and meta-analysis

Onyinyechi OM, Mohd Nazan AIN, Ismail S

Front Public Health, 2023;11:1217052.
PMID: 37601202 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1217052

INTRODUCTION: Malaria health education intervention is a community-directed approach that has long been considered important in preventing malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. However, its effectiveness is being questioned due to a lack of strong evidence. We aim to synthesize the evidence of the impact of health education on malaria knowledge and insecticide-treated nets (ITN) usage. Specifically, we analyzed the odds of correctly answering malaria-related questions and the odds of using ITN between the intervention and control groups.
METHODS: Experimental and observational studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2021 which had quantitatively evaluated the impact of health education interventions on malaria knowledge and ITN usage were included in the review.
RESULTS: A total of 11 studies (20,523 participants) were included. Four studies used educational interventions to teach appropriate ITN strategies and promote ITN usage. Two others focused on improving knowledge of malaria transmission, prevention, treatment, and its signs and symptoms. The remaining five studies assessed both ITN use and malaria knowledge. Of these, 10 were eligible for meta-analysis. On average, the odds of a person in the intervention group reporting better malaria knowledge (odds ratio 1.30, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.70, p = 0.05) and higher ITN usage (odds ratio 1.53, 95% CI: 1.02 to 2.29, p = 0.004) increased significantly after receiving health education interventions compared to those in the control group. The odds of ITN usage also substantially increased when the interventions were based on a theory or model (odds ratio 5.27, 95% CI: 3.24 to 8.58, p = 0.05).
DISCUSSION: Our review highlights sub-Saharan Africa's various health education strategies to curb malaria over the past two decades. Meta-analysis findings show that health education interventions are moderately effective in improving malaria knowledge and ITN usage and have contributed to the effort of global malaria strategy.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa South of the Sahara
Fulltext Harnessing the power of AI: Advanced deep learning models optimization for accurate SARS-CoV-2 forecasting

Tariq MU, Ismail SB, Babar M, Ahmad A

PLoS One, 2023;18(7):e0287755.
PMID: 37471397 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287755

The pandemic has significantly affected many countries including the USA, UK, Asia, the Middle East and Africa region, and many other countries. Similarly, it has substantially affected Malaysia, making it crucial to develop efficient and precise forecasting tools for guiding public health policies and approaches. Our study is based on advanced deep-learning models to predict the SARS-CoV-2 cases. We evaluate the performance of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Bi-directional LSTM, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), CNN-LSTM, Multilayer Perceptron, Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). We trained these models and assessed them using a detailed dataset of confirmed cases, demographic data, and pertinent socio-economic factors. Our research aims to determine the most reliable and accurate model for forecasting SARS-CoV-2 cases in the region. We were able to test and optimize deep learning models to predict cases, with each model displaying diverse levels of accuracy and precision. A comprehensive evaluation of the models' performance discloses the most appropriate architecture for Malaysia's specific situation. This study supports ongoing efforts to combat the pandemic by offering valuable insights into the application of sophisticated deep-learning models for precise and timely SARS-CoV-2 case predictions. The findings hold considerable implications for public health decision-making, empowering authorities to create targeted and data-driven interventions to limit the virus's spread and minimize its effects on Malaysia's population.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa
Fulltext Living Safely With Bats: Lessons in Developing and Sharing a Global One Health Educational Resource

Martinez S, Sullivan A, Hagan E, Goley J, Epstein JH, Olival KJ, et al.

Glob Health Sci Pract, 2022 Dec 21;10(6).
PMID: 36951282 DOI: 10.9745/GHSP-D-22-00106

As part of a public health behavior change and communication strategy related to the identification of a novel ebolavirus in bats in Sierra Leone in 2016, a consortium of experts launched an effort to create a widely accessible resource for community awareness and education on reducing disease risk. The resulting picture book, Living Safely With Bats, includes technical content developed by a consortium of experts in public health, animal health, conservation, bats, and disease ecology from 30 countries. The book has now been adapted, translated, and used in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia. We review the processes used to integrate feedback from local stakeholders and multidisciplinary experts. We also provide recommendations for One Health and other practitioners who choose to pursue the development and evaluation of this or similar zoonotic disease risk mitigation tools.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa
Fulltext Mapping age- and sex-specific HIV prevalence in adults in sub-Saharan Africa, 2000-2018

Haeuser E, Serfes AL, Cork MA, Yang M, Abbastabar H, Abhilash ES, et al.

BMC Med, 2022 Dec 19;20(1):488.
PMID: 36529768 DOI: 10.1186/s12916-022-02639-z

BACKGROUND: Human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is still among the leading causes of disease burden and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and the world is not on track to meet targets set for ending the epidemic by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Precise HIV burden information is critical for effective geographic and epidemiological targeting of prevention and treatment interventions. Age- and sex-specific HIV prevalence estimates are widely available at the national level, and region-wide local estimates were recently published for adults overall. We add further dimensionality to previous analyses by estimating HIV prevalence at local scales, stratified into sex-specific 5-year age groups for adults ages 15-59 years across SSA.
METHODS: We analyzed data from 91 seroprevalence surveys and sentinel surveillance among antenatal care clinic (ANC) attendees using model-based geostatistical methods to produce estimates of HIV prevalence across 43 countries in SSA, from years 2000 to 2018, at a 5 × 5-km resolution and presented among second administrative level (typically districts or counties) units.
RESULTS: We found substantial variation in HIV prevalence across localities, ages, and sexes that have been masked in earlier analyses. Within-country variation in prevalence in 2018 was a median 3.5 times greater across ages and sexes, compared to for all adults combined. We note large within-district prevalence differences between age groups: for men, 50% of districts displayed at least a 14-fold difference between age groups with the highest and lowest prevalence, and at least a 9-fold difference for women. Prevalence trends also varied over time; between 2000 and 2018, 70% of all districts saw a reduction in prevalence greater than five percentage points in at least one sex and age group. Meanwhile, over 30% of all districts saw at least a five percentage point prevalence increase in one or more sex and age group.
CONCLUSIONS: As the HIV epidemic persists and evolves in SSA, geographic and demographic shifts in prevention and treatment efforts are necessary. These estimates offer epidemiologically informative detail to better guide more targeted interventions, vital for combating HIV in SSA.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa South of the Sahara/epidemiology
Fulltext Global mortality associated with 33 bacterial pathogens in 2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

GBD 2019 Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators

Lancet, 2022 Dec 17;400(10369):2221-2248.
PMID: 36423648 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02185-7

BACKGROUND: Reducing the burden of death due to infection is an urgent global public health priority. Previous studies have estimated the number of deaths associated with drug-resistant infections and sepsis and found that infections remain a leading cause of death globally. Understanding the global burden of common bacterial pathogens (both susceptible and resistant to antimicrobials) is essential to identify the greatest threats to public health. To our knowledge, this is the first study to present global comprehensive estimates of deaths associated with 33 bacterial pathogens across 11 major infectious syndromes.
METHODS: We estimated deaths associated with 33 bacterial genera or species across 11 infectious syndromes in 2019 using methods from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, in addition to a subset of the input data described in the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance 2019 study. This study included 343 million individual records or isolates covering 11 361 study-location-years. We used three modelling steps to estimate the number of deaths associated with each pathogen: deaths in which infection had a role, the fraction of deaths due to infection that are attributable to a given infectious syndrome, and the fraction of deaths due to an infectious syndrome that are attributable to a given pathogen. Estimates were produced for all ages and for males and females across 204 countries and territories in 2019. 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) were calculated for final estimates of deaths and infections associated with the 33 bacterial pathogens following standard GBD methods by taking the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles across 1000 posterior draws for each quantity of interest.
FINDINGS: From an estimated 13·7 million (95% UI 10·9-17·1) infection-related deaths in 2019, there were 7·7 million deaths (5·7-10·2) associated with the 33 bacterial pathogens (both resistant and susceptible to antimicrobials) across the 11 infectious syndromes estimated in this study. We estimated deaths associated with the 33 bacterial pathogens to comprise 13·6% (10·2-18·1) of all global deaths and 56·2% (52·1-60·1) of all sepsis-related deaths in 2019. Five leading pathogens-Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa-were responsible for 54·9% (52·9-56·9) of deaths among the investigated bacteria. The deadliest infectious syndromes and pathogens varied by location and age. The age-standardised mortality rate associated with these bacterial pathogens was highest in the sub-Saharan Africa super-region, with 230 deaths (185-285) per 100 000 population, and lowest in the high-income super-region, with 52·2 deaths (37·4-71·5) per 100 000 population. S aureus was the leading bacterial cause of death in 135 countries and was also associated with the most deaths in individuals older than 15 years, globally. Among children younger than 5 years, S pneumoniae was the pathogen associated with the most deaths. In 2019, more than 6 million deaths occurred as a result of three bacterial infectious syndromes, with lower respiratory infections and bloodstream infections each causing more than 2 million deaths and peritoneal and intra-abdominal infections causing more than 1 million deaths.
INTERPRETATION: The 33 bacterial pathogens that we investigated in this study are a substantial source of health loss globally, with considerable variation in their distribution across infectious syndromes and locations. Compared with GBD Level 3 underlying causes of death, deaths associated with these bacteria would rank as the second leading cause of death globally in 2019; hence, they should be considered an urgent priority for intervention within the global health community. Strategies to address the burden of bacterial infections include infection prevention, optimised use of antibiotics, improved capacity for microbiological analysis, vaccine development, and improved and more pervasive use of available vaccines. These estimates can be used to help set priorities for vaccine need, demand, and development.
FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Department of Health and Social Care, using UK aid funding managed by the Fleming Fund.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa South of the Sahara
Fulltext Snake Venomics and Antivenomics of Cape Cobra (Naja nivea) from South Africa: Insights into Venom Toxicity and Cross-Neutralization Activity

Tan CH, Wong KY, Huang LK, Tan KY, Tan NH, Wu WG

Toxins (Basel), 2022 Dec 07;14(12).
PMID: 36548757 DOI: 10.3390/toxins14120860

Naja nivea (Cape Cobra) is endemic to southern Africa. Envenoming by N. nivea is neurotoxic, resulting in fatal paralysis. Its venom composition, however, has not been studied in depth, and specific antivenoms against it remain limited in supply. Applying a protein decomplexation approach, this study unveiled the venom proteome of N. nivea from South Africa. The major components in the venom are cytotoxins/cardiotoxins (~75.6% of total venom proteins) and alpha-neurotoxins (~7.4%), which belong to the three-finger toxin family. Intriguingly, phospholipase A2 (PLA2) was undetected-this is a unique venom phenotype increasingly recognized in the African cobras of the Uraeus subgenus. The work further showed that VINS African Polyvalent Antivenom (VAPAV) exhibited cross-reactivity toward the venom and immunorecognized its toxin fractions. In mice, VAPAV was moderately efficacious in cross-neutralizing the venom lethality with a potency of 0.51 mg/mL (amount of venom completely neutralized per milliliter of antivenom). In the challenge-rescue model, VAPAV prevented death in 75% of experimentally envenomed mice, with slow recovery from neurotoxicity up to 24 h. The finding suggests the potential para-specific utility of VAPAV for N. nivea envenoming, although a higher dose or repeated administration of the antivenom may be required to fully reverse the neurotoxic effect of the venom.

Matched MeSH terms: South Africa
Fulltext A review about COVID-19 in the MENA region: environmental concerns and machine learning applications

Meskher H, Belhaouari SB, Thakur AK, Sathyamurthy R, Singh P, Khelfaoui I, et al.

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int, 2022 Nov;29(55):82709-82728.
PMID: 36223015 DOI: 10.1007/s11356-022-23392-z

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has delayed global economic growth, which has affected the economic life globally. On the one hand, numerous elements in the environment impact the transmission of this new coronavirus. Every country in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area has a different population density, air quality and contaminants, and water- and land-related conditions, all of which influence coronavirus transmission. The World Health Organization (WHO) has advocated fast evaluations to guide policymakers with timely evidence to respond to the situation. This review makes four unique contributions. One, many data about the transmission of the new coronavirus in various sorts of settings to provide clear answers to the current dispute over the virus's transmission were reviewed. Two, highlight the most significant application of machine learning to forecast and diagnose severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Three, our insights provide timely and accurate information along with compelling suggestions and methodical directions for investigators. Four, the present study provides decision-makers and community leaders with information on the effectiveness of environmental controls for COVID-19 dissemination.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa, Northern/epidemiology
Fulltext Predicting the potential for zoonotic transmission and host associations for novel viruses

Pandit PS, Anthony SJ, Goldstein T, Olival KJ, Doyle MM, Gardner NR, et al.

Commun Biol, 2022 Aug 19;5(1):844.
PMID: 35986178 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03797-9

Host-virus associations have co-evolved under ecological and evolutionary selection pressures that shape cross-species transmission and spillover to humans. Observed virus-host associations provide relevant context for newly discovered wildlife viruses to assess knowledge gaps in host-range and estimate pathways for potential human infection. Using models to predict virus-host networks, we predicted the likelihood of humans as hosts for 513 newly discovered viruses detected by large-scale wildlife surveillance at high-risk animal-human interfaces in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Predictions indicated that novel coronaviruses are likely to infect a greater number of host species than viruses from other families. Our models further characterize novel viruses through prioritization scores and directly inform surveillance targets to identify host ranges for newly discovered viruses.

Matched MeSH terms: Africa

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