The Ebola virus in West Africa has infected almost 30,000 and killed over 11,000 people. Recent models of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) have often made assumptions about how the disease spreads, such as uniform transmissibility and homogeneous mixing within a population. In this paper, we test whether these assumptions are necessarily correct, and offer simple solutions that may improve disease mod...

The marine biodiversity of Gabon, West Africa has not been well studied and is largely unknown. Our examination of marine communities associated with oil platforms in Gabon is the first scientific investigation of these structures and highlights the unique ecosystems associated with them. A number of species previously unknown to Gabonese waters were recorded during our surveys on these platfor...

This article uses the experience of five European countries to review the integrated approaches (human, animal and vector) for surveillance and monitoring of West Nile virus (WNV) at national and European levels. The epidemiological situation of West Nile fever in Europe is heterogeneous. No model of surveillance and monitoring fits all, hence this article merely encourages countries to impleme...

Over the last several years, WNV has gained importance as an emerging human pathogen in Eastern Europe that has been spreading westward along the Danube. Recently, West Nile virus (WNV) was proven to be present in the neighboring countries of Austria, such as Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic [3-5], as well as in eastern parts of Austria [6], where it was detected in birds by RT-PCR. The la...

The W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) ecosystem, shared among Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger, represents the last lion stronghold of West Africa. To assess the impact of trophy hunting on lion populations in hunting areas of the WAP, we analyzed trends in harvest rates from 1999 to 2014. We also investigated whether the hunting areas with higher initial hunting intensity experienced steeper declines in lion...

A surveillance system to detect West Nile virus (WNV) was established in Cuba in 2002. WNV infection was confirmed by serologic assays in 4 asymptomatic horses and 3 humans with encephalitis in 2003 and 2004. These results are the first reported evidence of WNV activity in Cuba.

Through the process of Eurocentric pro-colonialist propaganda people have been, and continue to be, led to assume that the European colonialists brought criminal justice and law and order to Africa. This article challenges those assumptions by using the work of scholars of African history to highlight the existence of criminal justice systems in Africa, in particular pre-colonial West Africa. I...

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Multiple sclerosis has been reported to be very uncommon in the West Indies. In previous studies immigrants from the West Indies resident in Greater London had only one-eighth the likelihood of being diagnosed in hospital as having multiple sclerosis compared with those born in the United Kingdom. No studies of the incidence and prevalence of multiple sclerosis were available for London or Sout...

Before the introduction of the West Nile virus (WNV) into the United States of America (USA) in 1999, conditions in North America were ideal for an arboviral epidemic. Such factors as the large, susceptible and non-immune animal and human populations, the presence of competent vectors, increasing international travel and commerce, existing methods for rapid dissemination and an ill-prepared ani...