The recent World Health Organization moratorium on rectal artesunate (RAS) for pre-referral treatment of severe childhood malaria is costing young lives. The decision was based on disappointing findings from a large observational study that provided RAS to community health workers with little training and supervision. This non-randomized, operational research has provided useful information to guide the implementation of RAS but is subject to bias and confounding and cannot be used to assess treatment effects. Parenteral artesunate reduces severe malaria mortality and a large body of evidence also shows RAS has lifesaving efficacy. There is now more than a decade of delay in conducting the necessary engagement and training required for successful deployment of RAS. Further delays will result in more preventable deaths.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Summary In most respects, the demography of Kalahari suricates ( Suricata suricatta ) resembles that of other social mongooses. Average group size varies from four to nine, and groups typically include several mature females, of which one is responsible for the majority of breeding attempts. Breeding females show a postpartum oestrus; gestation is around 60 days; litter size is three to five pups at emergence and females rarely breed before the age of 24 months. In contrast, annual survival rates (0.20 for pups and 0.43 for animals over one year old) are lower than those recorded in other species. Breeding frequency is related to rainfall and breeding can cease altogether when rainfall is unusually low. In a year when this occurred, group size eroded rapidly and over 60% of groups became extinct. Total numbers were slow to recover during the following year because emigration by females was infrequent and new groups did not form in vacant ranges created by the extinction of groups. High rates of group extinction have been found in other cooperative breeders and may occur because breeding success and survival show inverse density dependence.
No abstract is provided for this article.
We used long‐term data on movements, survival, and reproduction of female red deer ( Cervus elaphus Linnaeus) of the Isle of Rum, Scotland (1970–2001), to explain variation in life history (age at maturity) from a hind's access to habitat resources and exposure to local density, and cross‐generational (maternal) effects on observed relationships. We described each hind's use of resources relative to availability in the study area from an individual‐based resource selection function (RSF); we defined local density as the total number of hinds aged ≥1 year within the subpopulation cluster to which an individual belonged. The likelihood of a hind producing her first calf in the period from birth to the end of the summer in which she turned age 3 was positively related to relative use of Agrostis / Festuca grasslands and other low‐elevation communities, and inversely related to a hind's mean annual local density. However, when we considered both a daughter's RSF and exposure to local density and her mother's RSF and exposure to local density, maternal data alone most parsimoniously explained variation in age at maturity of daughters. Mothers were able to lower age at maturity in their daughters in two, non‐mutually exclusive ways. First, birth mass of daughters was inversely related to age at maturity, and mothers that used relatively less uplands ( Calluna ‐dominated heath and heather moorland) and occupied areas of lower density produced larger offspring. Second, mothers could establish a home range that enabled daughters to mature in areas with access to high quality Agrostis / Festuca grasslands at low density. Lifetime reproductive success was inversely associated with a hind's age at maturity via extension of the reproductive life span. Longevity did not change in association with age at maturity. Patterns in how animals use available habitat resources may depend on that of previous generations, especially at larger scales of resource selection.
