Organization: World Health Organization – African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control

Project Location: Burkina Faso

Web address: http://www.apoc.bf/en/

Title of Grant: “Providing public access to the unique bio-monitoring database of the West African aquatic fauna collected during 29 years of the Onchocerciasis Control Programme in West Africa ”

Grant Amount: $173,990 over 2 years

Principal Investigator: Laurent Yameogo

Organization Background:

The World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established in April 1948, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it is recognized as an international organization by the US government via Executive Order under Chapter 22 of the US Code Subchapter 288. WHO is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.

The African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) was formed in December 1995 with the aim of eliminating onchocerciasis from African countries where the disease is endemic.

Grant Description:

The activities of the onchocerciasis control program in West Africa to eliminate the river blindness disease initially focused on vector control. River blindness is the common name for onchocerciasis, a devastating disease found predominantly in Africa but also occurring in Central America and small pockets of the Middle East. In 1974, international community efforts to join forces in a concerted effort to tackle onchocerciasis resulted in the establishment of the Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP) in West Africa. The vector control activities involved frequent pesticide-spraying. At the onset in 1974, the pesticide-spraying strategies were guided by a committee of international experts called “the Ecological Group” to reduce or mitigate damage to non-target aquatic organisms (invertebrates and fish). To that effect, structures and protocols were developed to assess the short-term impact of any candidate larvicide on the aquatic fauna, and to monitor potential long-term changes in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Togo. The potential long-term impact of the insecticides used was assessed through periodic but regular sampling of the aquatic non-target fauna, which consisted of fish and invertebrates. Almost 100 sites were sampled of which more than 40 sites located on 26 rivers in the above-mentioned countries were monitored on a regular basis. This unique set of data on West African freshwater biodiversity is therefore available in WHO/APOC that could be made available to the international community. Recent analysis of this database concluded that no significant adverse effects of the resulting spraying strategies on non-target aquatic communities were detectable.

Although part of these data were analyzed under the guidance and responsibility of the Ecological Group, much remains to be done to conserve the whole set of data to make it available to future generations of biodiversity researchers. The information collected represents the largest assemblage of long-term data anywhere in the developing world and is in fact more complete than data currently available in many developed parts of the world. The data set has information on both fish (more than 250 species) and aquatic invertebrates (more than 120 taxa including some identified to species or genus).

The Solution:

It is important that the data is cleaned and formatted so that it could be easily analyzed by a user-friendly program, which this project intends to improve. Once this is done, this database will be made accessible to the public through the website of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control Program. The data set will allow studies on the geographical distribution of taxonomic groups and comparisons over time of any changes in the fauna in the aquatic environment of West Africa, and will be disseminated to the scientific and development community. This data will be of particular interest to the academic community of the West Africa region, the agricultural and rural development community, and those wishing to monitor the changes in the environment over time.

The project will be an inter-disciplinary effort between experts in ecology/biology, hydrobiology, biostatistics and informatics to ensure that the important and unique database on the non-target freshwater fish and invertebrates will be available to the international scientific community. The data is not only a unique and unparalleled resource for the global biodiversity community but also an opportunity to provide professional development to biologists in West Africa, enhance the bioinformatics skills in the region and disseminate the results of 29 years of investment by the development community in ecological management by a public health program.

The project will be a South-South and also a South-North collaborative effort which will focus on:
• Cleaning the existing database on aquatic monitoring activities;
• Developing a user-friendly programme for the existing database;
• Developing a format and type of data to be made available to the scientific community;
• Making accessible components of the database through the website of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control Program and other sites as recommended by the Foundation and other collaborators.

Global Impact:

The improvement of the access and use of the unique long term database of West African aquatic fauna monitored within the framework of the onchocerciasis control program will make this unique database on West African freshwater biodiversity available to the public and biodiversity researchers worldwide