African Sleeping Sickness

African Sleeping Sickness
Author: Jonathan Musere
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1990-01-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780889462809

Based on an interplay of bio-ecology, medicine, anthropology, history, and sociopolitics, this work compares and contrasts the role of communalist traditional, colonial, and postcolonial agencies in the control or eruption of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in man and cattle in Uganda.

The Trypanosomiases

The Trypanosomiases
Author: Ian Maudlin
Publisher: CABI
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2004-07-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780851990347

This state-of-the-art reference book includes comprehensive coverage of the biology and control of African, Asian and South American trypanosomiasis ("sleeping sickness") in man and animals. It describes recent research developments in the biology and molecular biology of trypanosomes (the protozoan parasite) and their vectors, and methods in diagnosis and control, such as trapping tsetse fly vectors. Different sections of the book are devoted to biology of trypanosomes, vector biology, epidemiology and diagnosis, pathogenesis, disease impact, chemotherapy and disease control, and vector control. The book contains contributions from leading experts from Europe, North and South America, and Africa.

The African Trypanosomes

The African Trypanosomes
Author: Samuel J. Black
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2006-04-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0306468948

African trypanosomes are tsetse-transmitted protozoa that inhabit the extracellular compartment of host blood. They cause fatal sleeping sickness in people, and Nagana, a wasting and generally fatal disease, in cattle. While trypanosomes are most common to Africa (about 30% of Africa's cattle graze on the fringe of the tsetse habitat), some species have spread beyond its boarders to Asia, the Middle East and South America. The African Trypanosomes, volume one of World Class Parasites, is written for researchers, students and scholars who enjoy reading research that has a major impact on human health, or agricultural productivity, and against which we have no satisfactory defense. It is intended to supplement more formal texts that cover taxonomy, life cycles, morphology, vector distribution, symptoms and treatment. It integrates vector, pathogen and host biology and celebrates the diversity of approach that comprises modern parasitological research.

African Ecology

African Ecology
Author: Clive Alfred Spinage
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1582
Release: 2012-01-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3642228720

In view of the rapidly changing ecology of Africa ,this work provides benchmarks for some of the major, and more neglected, aspects, with an accent on historical data to enable habitats to be seen in relation to their previous state, forming a background reference work to understanding how the ecology of Africa has been shaped by its past. Reviewing historical data wherever possible it adopts an holistic view treating man as well as animals, with accent on diseases both human and animal which have been a potent force in shaping Africa’s ecology, a role neglected in ecological studies.

Tsetse Biology and Ecology

Tsetse Biology and Ecology
Author: Stephen G. A. Leak
Publisher: ILRI (aka ILCA and ILRAD)
Total Pages: 598
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780851993003

Domestic livestock in Africa are of importance not only as a source of milk and meat but also as a source of animal traction enabling farmers to cultivate larger areas, with crops providing the staple foods. Trypanosomosis, a parasitic disease transmitted cyclically by the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.), is arguably still the main constraint to livestock production on the continent, preventing full use of the land to feed the rapidly increasing human population. Sleeping sickness, the disease caused in humans by species of Trypanosoma, is an important and neglected disease posing a threat to millions of people in tsetse-infested areas. Often wrongly thought of as a disease of the past, the prevalence of human sleeping sickness is increasing in many areas. Although alternative methods to control the disease are being investigated, such as immunological approaches, use of chemotherapy or exploitation of the trypanotolerance trait, it is only control or eradication of the tsetse fly vector which will remove the threat of the disease rather than providing a better means of "living" with it. As a result of the economic impact of tsetse-transmitted Trypanosomosis, a large amount of research literature has been produced. This book provides a comprehensive review of this literature. The text is divided into four parts: tsetse biology and ecology, epidemiology, vector control and control of trypanosomosis. The book is invaluable for medical and veterinary entomologists, parasitologists and epidemiologists.

Africa as a Living Laboratory

Africa as a Living Laboratory
Author: Helen Tilley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2011-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226803481

Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonialism, a process that coincided with the advent of a range of new scientific specialties and research methods. Africa as a Living Laboratory is a far-reaching study of the thorny relationship between imperialism and the role of scientific expertise—environmental, medical, racial, and anthropological—in the colonization of British Africa. A key source for Helen Tilley’s analysis is the African Research Survey, a project undertaken in the 1930s to explore how modern science was being applied to African problems. This project both embraced and recommended an interdisciplinary approach to research on Africa that, Tilley argues, underscored the heterogeneity of African environments and the interrelations among the problems being studied. While the aim of British colonialists was unquestionably to transform and modernize Africa, their efforts, Tilley contends, were often unexpectedly subverted by scientific concerns with the local and vernacular. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Africa as a Living Laboratory transforms our understanding of imperial history, colonial development, and the role science played in both.

Ecology and Behaviour of the African Buffalo

Ecology and Behaviour of the African Buffalo
Author: H.H.T Prins
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400915276

Over the past 30 years or so, research effort in behaviour and ecology has progressed from simple documentation of the habits or habitats of differ ent species to asking more searching questions about the adaptiveness of the patterns of behaviour observed; moved from documenting simply what occurs, to trying to understand why. Increasingly, studies of behav iour or ecology explore the function of particular responses or patterns of behaviour in individuals or populations - looking for the adaptiveness that has led to the adoption of such patterns either at a proximate level (what environmental circumstances have favoured the adoption of some particular strategy or response from within the animal's repertoire at that specific time) or at an evolutionary level (speculating upon what pres sures have led to the inclusion of a particular pattern of behaviour within the repertoire in the first place). Many common principles have been established - common to a wide diversity of animal groups, yet showing some precise relationship between a given aspect of behaviour or population dynamics and some particular ecological factor. In particular, tremendous advances have been made in understanding the foraging behaviour of animals - and the 'decision rules' by which they seek and select from the various resources on offer - and patterns of social organization and behaviour: the adap tiveness of different social structures, group sizes or reproductive tactics.