Browsing by Author "Kalema-Zikusoka, Gladys"

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    Best Practice Guidelines for Health Monitoring and Disease Control in Great Ape Populations
    (Occasional Papers of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, 2015) Gilardi, Kirsten V.; Gillespie, Thomas R.; Kalema-Zikusoka, Gladys; Köndgen, Sophie; Mugisha, Lawrence; Rwego, Innocent
    For everyone: compulsory 5-day* quarantine before going to the chimpanzee research camps. The quarantine period starts on Friday afternoon, when assistants come back to the park after their week off, and ends ve days later on Wednesday afternoon. In normal routines, no one should join the quarantine later than Friday, as it will interrupt the quarantine cycle, in which case quarantine needs to start all over again. Travellers arriving on days other than Friday (international travellers or coming from Abidjan) can start their quarantine in north camp so as not to interrupt the routine quarantine.
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    Community health and human-animal contacts on the edges of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda
    (Public Library of Science, 2021-11-24) Muylaert, Renata L; Davidson, Ben; Ngabirano, Alex; Kalema-Zikusoka, Gladys; MacGregor, Hayley; Lloyd-Smith, James O; Fayaz, Ahmed; Knox, Matthew A; Hayman, David T S
    Abstract Cross-species transmission of pathogens is intimately linked to human and environmental health. With limited healthcare and challenging living conditions, people living in poverty may be particularly susceptible to endemic and emerging diseases. Similarly, wildlife is impacted by human influences, including pathogen sharing, especially for species in close contact with people and domesticated animals. Here we investigate human and animal contacts and human health in a community living around the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), Uganda. We used contact and health survey data to identify opportunities for cross-species pathogen transmission, focusing mostly on people and the endangered mountain gorilla. We conducted a survey with background questions and self-reported diaries to investigate 100 participants' health, such as symptoms and behaviours, and contact patterns, including direct contacts and sightings over a week. Contacts were revealed through networks, including humans, domestic, peri-domestic, and wild animal groups for 1) contacts seen in the week of background questionnaire completion, and 2) contacts seen during the diary week. Participants frequently felt unwell during the study, reporting from one to 10 disease symptoms at different intensity levels, with severe symptoms comprising 6.4% of the diary records and tiredness and headaches the most common symptoms. After human-human contacts, direct contact with livestock and peri-domestic animals were the most common. The contact networks were moderately connected and revealed a preference in contacts within the same taxon and within their taxa groups. Sightings of wildlife were much more common than touching. However, despite contact with wildlife being the rarest of all contact types, one direct contact with a gorilla with a timeline including concerning participant health symptoms was reported. When considering all interaction types, gorillas mostly exhibited intra-species contact, but were found to interact with five other species, including people and domestic animals. Our findings reveal a local human population with recurrent symptoms of illness in a location with intense exposure to factors that can increase pathogen transmission, such as direct contact with domestic and wild animals and proximity among animal species. Despite significant biases and study limitations, the information generated here can guide future studies, such as models for disease spread and One Health interventions.
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    Lifetime fitness consequences of early-life ecological hardship in a wild mammal population
    (Ecology and evolution, 2017) Marshall, Harry H.; Vitikainen, Emma I. K.; Mwanguhya, Francis; Businge, Robert; Kyabulima, Solomon; Hares, Michelle C.; Inzani, Emma; Kalema-Zikusoka, Gladys; Mwesige, Kenneth; Nichols, Hazel J.; Sanderson, Jennifer L.; Thompson, Faye J.; Cant, Michael A.
    Early-life ecological conditions have major effects on survival and reproduction. Numerous studies in wild systems show fitness benefits of good quality early-life ecological conditions (“silver-spoon” effects). Recently, however, some studies have reported that poor-quality early-life ecological conditions are associated with later-life fitness advantages and that the effect of early-life conditions can be sex-specific. Furthermore, few studies have investigated the effect of the variability of early-life ecological conditions on later-life fitness. Here, we test how the mean and variability of early-life ecological conditions affect the longevity and reproduction of males and females using 14 years of data on wild banded mongooses (Mungos mungo). Males that experienced highly variable ecological conditions during development lived longer and had greater lifetime fitness, while those that experienced poor early-life conditions lived longer but at a cost of reduced fertility. In females, there were no such effects. Our study suggests that exposure to more variable environments in early life can result in lifetime fitness benefits, whereas differences in the mean early-life conditions experienced mediate a life-history trade-off between survival and reproduction. It also demonstrates how early-life ecological conditions can produce different selection pressures on males and females.
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    One Health capacity building in sub-Saharan Africa
    (Infection ecology & epidemiology, 2016) Rwego, Innocent B.; Olajide, Olutayo B.; Musotsi, Protus; Nzietchueng, Serge; Keambo, Christian T.; Kabasa, John D.; Naigaga, Irene; Kalema-Zikusoka, Gladys; Pelican, Katherine
    Africa of late has been faced with challenges that require a multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach to address them, and academic and non-academic institutions have played a key role in training and conducting research that would promote the One Health approach. Objectives: The objective of this review was to document networks and organizations conducting One Health training, research, and outreach in Africa, as one of a series of articles around the world. Methods: Data for this review were collected from organizations through key contacts of the authors and their knowledge of networks they have worked with. Web searches were conducted using One Health, training, and research as key words for work done in Africa. Results: Africa has major networks involved in One Health training, research, and outreach, with participation of both academic and non-academic institutions. This review highlights an effort in Africa to form networks to conduct multidisciplinary training and research. The main networks include Afrique One, Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS), and One Health Central and Eastern Africa (OHCEA). Conclusions: Both academic and non-academic institutions and organizations have shown an interest to conduct multidisciplinary training and research in Africa for managing challenges that Africa is facing currently, especially the outbreak of infectious diseases.
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    Recombinant Antigen Targets for Serodiagnosis of African Swine Fever
    (Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, 2009) Gallardo, Carmina; Reis, Ana L.; Kalema-Zikusoka, Gladys; Malta, Joana; Soler, Alejandro; Blanco, Esther; Parkhouse, R. M. E.; Leita, Alexandre
    African swine fever (ASF) is an infectious and economically important disease of domestic pigs. There is no vaccine, and so reliable diagnosis is essential for control strategies. The performance of four recombinant ASF virus (ASFV) protein (pK205R, pB602L, p104R, and p54)-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) was evaluated with European porcine field sera that had been established by Office International des Epizooties (OIE)-approved tests to be ASFV negative (n = 119) and ASFV positive (n = 80). The κ values showed that there was almost perfect agreement between the results of the “gold standard” test (immunoblotting) and the results obtained by the p54-specific ELISA (κ = 0.95; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.90 to 0.99) and the pK205R-specific ELISA or the pB602L-specific ELISA (κ = 0.92; 95% CI, 0.86 to 0.97). For the pA104R-specific ELISA, there was substantial to almost perfect agreement (κ = 0.81; 95% CI, 0.72 to 0.89). Similar results were observed by the OIE-approved ELISA (κ = 0.89; 95% CI, 0.82 to 0.95). Importantly, antibodies against these proteins were detectable early after infection of domestic pigs. Preliminary testing of 9 positive and 17 negative serum samples from pigs from West Africa showed identical results by the recombinant protein-based ELISA and the OIE-approved tests. In contrast, there was a high degree of specificity but a surprisingly a low level of sensitivity with 7 positive and 342 negative serum samples from pigs from East Africa. With poorly preserved sera, only the p104R-specific ELISA showed a significant reduction in sensitivity compared to that of the OIE-approved ELISA. Finally, these recombinant proteins also detected antibodies in the sera of the majority of infected warthogs. Thus, recombinant ASFV proteins p54, pB602L, and pK205R provide sensitive and specific targets for the detection of antibodies in European and West African domestic pigs and warthogs.