̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Sierra Leone

Track and trace in Sierra Leone

cjb250 — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 13:17:39 +0000

Professor Ian Goodfellow played a crucial role in helping to bring the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone to a close in 2014. His team's work helped inform technology used today in the majority of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing, which is keeping us safe in the current pandemic.

Britain's first colonial anthropology experiment revealed

ta385 — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

A new exhibition at MAA examines the pioneering ethnographic archive assembled by Britain’s first colonial anthropologist, Cambridge alumnus Northcote Thomas.

Call of duty: fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone

cjb250 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:16:43 +0000

On the windowsill of Professor Ian Goodfellow’s office sit photographs of him with his children, and just down the corridor, his wife is carrying out research in the same department. Even at work, he is surrounded by constant reminders of the special things in his life, providing a sense of security.

His work, too – apart from the treadmill of seeking funding – is a secure, safe environment. Goodfellow is a basic scientist, carrying out lab-based studies into viruses such as norovirus, the winter vomiting virus. He doesn’t even come into contact with norovirus patients, so is at no particular risk of contracting this unpleasant, but relatively harmless, infection.

Yet in December 2014, Goodfellow chose to leave all of this security behind – for several months at a time – to join a taskforce fighting one of the most hazardous and frightening emerging infections of recent times, the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Since the epidemic began in West Africa in 2013 until it was declared over in March 2016, the virus infected more than 28,000 and killed over 11,000 people.

Goodfellow was one of over 30 people from Cambridge, coordinated by Dr Tim Brooks at Public Health England, who lent their support. Goodfellow helped set up one of the first diagnostic laboratories in an Ebola Treatment Centre near Makeni, in northern Sierra Leone, with support from the UK government. This was physically demanding and at times potentially dangerous work. “We had to move several tons of equipment and reagents by hand, in 35°C heat with over 90% humidity on a rather dangerous and very active building site,” he recalls. During their stay they encountered fires, electric shocks, and one of his own postdocs was bitten by both a spider and a snake.

Since the start of the epidemic, Goodfellow and colleagues have sequenced over 600 Ebola genomes, helping provide information about how the virus is evolving in, and how its evolution has been affected by, unprecedented levels of human– human transmission.

Towards the tail end of the epidemic, sequencing allowed researchers to trace the origin of new cases. “To end the epidemic, you need to make sure that any new cases are in transmission chains that are being monitored and are geographically contained, so you can pinpoint where this virus is coming from.”

̽��ֱ��Tonkolili District, for example, had been Ebola-free for several months when a new case occurred. “We needed to know if this new case had come from a new introduction from an animal host, from a neighbouring country, or if it was part of a chain of transmission that had been hidden from the healthcare providers.

There’s a lot of stigma around Ebola, so it was possible there was a whole cluster in a village and that no-one was reporting the cases. That would be a disaster: all of a sudden, you don’t go from one to two cases, you go from one to tens or even hundreds.”

By sequencing the virus, in a very short time they were able to trace the source back to a survivor in whom the virus had persisted, and to take appropriate measures to prevent further spread. In fact, their work showed that Ebola can persist in survivors for over 15 months after infection and be transmitted through unprotected sex, and possibly even from a mother to her child through breastmilk.

Now that the emergency has passed, the treatment centre has closed down, but its equipment is being used at the ̽��ֱ�� of Makeni Infectious Disease Research Laboratory in a building donated by the country’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma. ̽��ֱ��laboratory was kitted out with support from the Wellcome Trust and the Cambridge- Africa Programme, and now functions as a base for local and visiting scientists to carry out research. Goodfellow and his postdoc Dr Luke Meredith have helped train local technicians and researchers in some of the latest techniques in surveillance and sequencing of pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis B.

“We need to avoid ‘parachute science’, where scientists fly in, take samples and leave,” he insists. “It should be about developing sustainable partnerships, about developing local capacity. With training and support, local researchers have the ability to respond to these outbreaks; they just need the equipment and the infrastructure.”

This has already shown its value. A new case arose in January 2016 while neither Goodfellow nor any of his colleagues were in the country, but local scientists were able to use the techniques to trace the source of the infection.

Going to Sierra Leone was not an easy decision for Goodfellow, but he feels that he had a duty to respond. “ ̽��ֱ��academic virology community had a responsibility to offer support. We couldn’t just sit back and watch this massive epidemic explode in front of our eyes with the knowledge that we have skills that could be useful.”

Many of the scientists who went out have struggled to return to their normal work, he says – some even quit their jobs on returning to take up more front-line jobs or to undertake more translational research. For Goodfellow, it has certainly made him appreciate the contribution that basic science makes.

“Basic science can often feel removed from real world applications,” he says, “but the skills you gain from running a laboratory are actually very useful in these kinds of environments. ̽��ֱ��ability to think on your feet and to figure out solutions is invaluable.”

It has also given him some perspective about what he does. “ ̽��ֱ��satisfaction you get from being involved in a response like this and in capacity building is orders of magnitude better than publishing academic papers.”

Cambridge graduate Charlotte Dixon (Churchill), BA (2014) Modern and Medieval Languages, was also part of the Ebola crisis response in Sierra Leone in 2015 while working with the Department for International Development on their Graduate Scheme.

Working in a lab as a basic scientist can often seem far removed from the real world. A year since the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak over, one researcher tells how the skills he learned working in a lab in Cambridge turned out to be surprisingly useful in fighting one of the most terrifying disease outbreaks of recent times.

̽��ֱ��satisfaction you get from being involved in a response like this ... is orders of magnitude better than publishing academic papers

Ian Goodfellow

Belt buckles

Dr Caroline Trotter works on an infectious disease that has killed even more than Ebola. It occurs periodically right across the ‘midriff’ of Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia, in the so-called ‘Meningitis Belt’.

In the last major meningitis outbreak, in 1996, some 250,000 were infected and 25,000 people died. It was at this point that the global health community came together to fight back.

̽��ֱ��Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) was launched, a partnership between international health organisation PATH and the World Health Organization (WHO). Working with the Serum Institute of India, MVP developed and rolled out the meningococcal A conjugate vaccine in just 10 years to combat the particular strain that affected the African belt. Since its introduction in 2010, 265 million people have been vaccinated. In Burkina Faso, where the vaccine was first used, a mass vaccination campaign saw 10 million people vaccinated in 10 days.

But even campaigns as huge as this aren’t enough to eliminate the infection, as Dr Caroline Trotter from the Department of Veterinary Medicine, explains: “You get a honeymoon period, but then you see a resurgence of cases.”

Trotter and her team used mathematical modelling to predict the best strategies for ensuring that this did not happen. ̽��ֱ��WHO, who funded her work, used it to shape their guidelines and ensure that the vaccine was introduced into routine vaccination programmes across sub- Saharan Africa.

She and Goodfellow were part of a Cambridge-Africa delegation to ̽��ֱ��Gambia in 2014 – a trip that inspired Goodfellow to lend support to combatting Ebola – and as a result Trotter is now working with collaborators at the Medical Research Council Unit in the country to look at the effect of the vaccine on pregnant women and their babies.

Meanwhile, she continues working with the African Meningococcal Carriage Consortium, a global research effort to study how meningococcal meningitis is spread in Africa, with the hope of gradually tightening the belt on this devastating disease.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Graduate, get a job … make a difference #2

ta385 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:00:01 +0000

Charlotte Dixon (Churchill), BA (2014) Modern and Medieval Languages

Since graduating I’ve been working with the Department for International Development (DFID). I started on the one year Graduate Scheme, working in London, but in 2015 I went to Sierra Leone as part of the Ebola crisis response. My current role is Policy and Programme Manager at DFID Ethiopia.

I've only been in Ethiopia for four months, but I’m really enjoying it so far. Day-to-day life can be challenging at times but it’s definitely worth it. No day is ever the same, so I never know quite what to expect when I head to work in the morning. When I arrived, the security situation here was quite unstable, so I haven't been able to see much of the country yet, but travel restrictions have just been lifted so I’m looking forward to being able to explore a bit more.

What Cambridge did for me

I first heard about the DFID Graduate Scheme through the Cambridge Careers Service. After going along to a talk they had organised with alumni already working for DFID, I knew it was the career for me.

Studying at Cambridge has helped me because it teaches you how to think on your feet and work under pressure. I studied French, Spanish and a bit of Portuguese. I don’t use them in my day-to-day job, but the fact that I have studied languages in the past has definitely helped me to pick up Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia). There are quite a lot of opportunities to use languages in international development - I hope to work in a French-speaking part of Africa in the future.

Outside of work, learning languages has definitely enriched my life, giving me a greater understanding of other cultures and, most importantly, giving me an excuse to travel to countries like Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala.

My motivation

I always knew that I didn’t want to pursue a conventional career in the corporate world - I wanted to do something that would make a difference. I also knew I wanted a career that would allow me to travel.

Applying to Cambridge

I was lucky that quite a few people I knew from my school were also applying to Cambridge, so it didn’t feel quite so daunting, but I still remember it being a long and stressful process. ̽��ֱ��college I went to, Churchill, had a really good mix of people which made it really easy to settle in.

Cambridge graduates enter a wide range of careers but making a difference tops their career wish lists. In this series, inspiring graduates from the last three years describe Cambridge, their current work and their determination to give back

Studying at Cambridge teaches you how to think on your feet and work under pressure

Charlotte Dixon

Charlotte Dixon working in Sierra Leone

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Ebola legacy lab will improve Sierra Leone’s resilience to future epidemics

cjb250 — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 09:32:16 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, carried out by two local scientists recently trained in next-generation genome sequencing techniques, will provide vital information about the virus that will help international scientists to identify the potential source of the infection.

̽��ֱ��lab at the ̽��ֱ�� of Makeni (UNIMAK) – a collaboration with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge supported by funding from the Wellcome Trust – will be officially opened today by Sierra Leonean Health Minister Dr Abu Bakarr Fofanah.

In the longer-term, the new facility will provide Sierra Leone with a greater ability to identify emerging infectious diseases in the earliest stages, increasing the country’s resilience to future epidemics. It is also expected to become a centre of excellence for research and teaching in the country, which has suffered more than 14,000 cases of the disease since the outbreak began.

̽��ֱ��laboratory evolved from a temporary facility at the Mateneh Ebola Treatment Centre, set up in April 2015 by Professor Ian Goodfellow from the Department of Pathology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who decided to apply his skills as an infectious disease researcher to the global response effort at the height of the Ebola outbreak.

With just a single sequencing machine, provided by Thermo Fisher Scientific and selected for its ability to function in a harsh environment of high temperatures, humidity and dust, the lab quickly began processing samples collected over the course of the epidemic to provide information about the evolution of the virus in real time. To date it has processed more than 1,200 clinical samples (including blood, semen and breastmilk), generating almost 600 full length Ebola virus genomes – the largest single dataset from any laboratory.

Now relocated to its permanent home in the university, with support from the UK Department for International Development, the UNIMAK Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory will provide a world-class environment for the training of local scientists and will bolster the in-country capacity for ongoing disease surveillance.

UNIMAK Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory (Credit: Ian Goodfellow)

In addition to Ebola, researchers will study other infectious diseases such as leptospirosis and Lassa Fever, as very little is known currently about these infections in the local population. ̽��ֱ��information they obtain will be made available to the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and local healthcare providers so that it may be used to devise better diagnostic and treatment strategies.

Professor Goodfellow said: “We initially set up our makeshift laboratory to provide temporary support during the emergency response to the Ebola epidemic. However, it soon became clear that there was a need to establish a more permanent facility within Sierra Leone to maintain these capabilities for the future.

“What started as little more than a sequencing machine in a tent has since blossomed into a fully functioning laboratory, where a new generation of scientists will train in the latest genome sequencing techniques to allow them to study infectious diseases in the local community.”

Professor Father Joe Turay, Vice Chancellor of UNIMAK, said: “As a university this laboratory will be part of our contribution to building a resilient health system in the country. Our partnership with Cambridge, along with other foundations and institutions, is about supporting UNIMAK in providing the training, research and community services that will strengthen our health infrastructure for post Ebola recovery in Sierra Leone.”

Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said: “ ̽��ֱ��recently confirmed case of Ebola in Sierra Leone serves as poignant reminder of the need to remain vigilant, and the new facilities in Makeni are already playing an important role in this.

“Beyond Ebola, it’s critical that research capabilities are strengthened and maintained in the long-term to build a better picture of health and disease in the local population. Not only will this help to improve the way infections are diagnosed and treated, it will also increase the region’s ability to identify and respond quickly to new epidemic threats as they emerge.”

Adapted from a press release from the Wellcome Trust

Samples from the recently confirmed case of Ebola in Sierra Leone have been analysed at a new infectious diseases laboratory in the country, set up in partnership with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in the wake of the epidemic.

What started as little more than a sequencing machine in a tent has since blossomed into a fully functioning laboratory, where a new generation of scientists will train in the latest genome sequencing techniques to allow them to study infectious diseases in the local community

Ian Goodfellow

Researchers at the UNIMAK Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Canopy commerce: forest conservation and poverty alleviation

lw355 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:37 +0000

Gola Forest, situated at the westernmost tip of a once extensive swathe of forest that stretched a thousand kilometres from Sierra Leone to Togo, is classified as a biodiversity hotspot of global significance. Its 71,000 hectares are home to over 330 species of bird, including the rare White-necked Picathartes and Rufous Fishing Owl, more than 500 species of butterfly, and a long list of threatened and endangered plants and animals.

̽��ֱ��forest, which was recently designated a National Park, is recovering from a history of commercial logging and mining, and areas have also been cleared by local communities for agriculture. Without protection, logging and mining activities would undoubtedly be resumed and destroy what remains.

But the forest is not only important for its biodiversity. Like other forests, Gola is a vast carbon store, both in the biomass of the trees themselves and in its storage of carbon as dead organic matter beneath the forest floor. For the past 20 years, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has been working with the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone Government to protect the Gola Forest. Safeguarding its future in perpetuity is a priority, as Dr Jeremy Lindsell, Senior Conservation Scientist at RSPB explained: “Without the Gola Forest Programme, it’s likely the forest would eventually be lost. Our goal is to find a mechanism by which richer countries can help one of the poorest countries in the world protect its nature at the same time as improving the livelihoods of the local communities.”

Now, innovative approaches to forest conservation and poverty alleviation are being pioneered by two projects made possible by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI; see panel below). Each project is a unique collaboration between researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge plant scientists Beccy Wilebore and Dr David Coomes, with CCI partner organisations RSPB and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), are conducting research for a scheme to fund forest conservation through carbon credits. And Dr Andreas Kontoleon and Dr Maarten Voors from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy, together with RSPB, BirdLife International and the Universities of Wageningen and Chicago, are working with local villagers to establish how best to reward them for forest conservation.

Carbon credits for conservation

Current estimates suggest that around 12%–17% of global greenhouse gas emissions result from deforestation and forest degradation. A drive to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) by incentivising countries to keep forests rather than clear them is currently being developed internationally by governments, conservation agencies, scientists and the private sector.

“Long-term funding for conservation of forests like Gola is difficult to secure, so carbon markets offer one possible solution,” explained Lindsell. “To do this, we must be able to demonstrate that the Gola Forest Programme is not only benefiting biodiversity, but that it is also reducing deforestation and securing the carbon stocks – essentially that our intervention makes a positive difference.”

This is where the expertise of the plant scientists comes in. Wilebore, whose research is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, is working with RSPB to determine how much carbon is in the forest and in the surrounding mosaic of land, which has been ‘slashed and burned’ for agriculture and is now regrowing as secondary forest.

“Once we know the baseline – the level of emissions we would expect from deforestation and forest degradation in the absence of the Gola Forest Programme – the impacts of the conservation programme on future carbon stores can be gauged,” she explained. To calculate the baseline, she is gathering information from ground-based inventory plots, satellite imagery of land cover types and, soon, three-dimensional images of forest structure obtained by airborne remote-sensing devices. A rigorous system will be developed by the research partners to measure current forest carbon stocks and predict changes in forest carbon stocks in the future.

“An important aspect of the new methodologies will be to advise policy makers on the relative merits of different approaches for estimating how much carbon would have been lost if the forests had been left unprotected,” added Coomes. “UNEP-WCMC will contribute greatly towards ensuring that lessons from the development of methods for Gola will influence the development of REDD+ policy at a critical point in time.” Over the next year, the data will help the Gola Forest Programme assess how carbon trading can be used to protect the forest and at the same time cut global carbon emissions.

Assessing livelihood impacts

Agreements have been struck with forest-edge communities to limit activities such as farming and hunting in the new National Park. In return, substantial funds have been set aside by the Gola Forest Programme for livelihood improvement for these communities. ̽��ֱ��funds support such projects as the building of schools and latrines, as compensation for benefits that have been foregone.

Although it’s widely acknowledged that, to be successful, conservation programmes must be coupled with poverty alleviation schemes, “there is scant hard scientific evidence on the impact of conservation policies on livelihoods, or on specific aspects of human behaviour that are related to conservation,” explained Kontoleon. ̽��ֱ��project he leads aims to address this gap.

Pooling expertise from economics, anthropology and conservation science, the team has carried out extremely detailed surveys of more than 2,800 households across 180 villages during the past two years. This has provided a ‘pre-treatment’ baseline recording all aspects of the villagers’ economic and social lives.

With the support of the Gola Forest Programme, the team then tested the impacts of a series of different conservation–livelihood interventions using randomised field experiments with ‘treated’ and ‘control’ groups (within ethical experimental norms).

For example, in one study, they experimentally assessed ways to improve co-operative behaviour within communities, given that pro-social behaviour is known to be essential for the effectiveness of conservation programmes. In another study, they evaluated how effectively conservation funds intended for community projects were actually spent under different managed regimes. And they explored how social cohesion and support for conservation can be best advanced by comparing aid payments allocated to village chiefs versus funds allocated directly to individuals, or through a voucher-for-work scheme.

After a return visit for a follow-up survey, the researchers are now analysing the data, with results expected early in 2012. “All in all, the project will provide the first detailed formal policy evaluation of a major conservation programme,” said Kontoleon. “ ̽��ֱ��results should allow us to derive reliable inferences on the livelihood and behavioural impacts of conservation policies.”

Predicting change

Over the next year, the two project teams will begin working more closely. Their combined data will help the researchers understand what drives changes in land use, and what effect this has on the environment and the impact of support programmes. Against a background of a rising world population and an increasing demand for food, studies such as these will prove vital for balancing global pressures at the least cost to biodiversity.

̽��ֱ��Gola Forest Programme might be regarded as something of a test case for how a large and dynamic biodiversity conservation project can be implemented sustainably in a developing country. “ ̽��ֱ��stakes are high in terms of the biodiversity and carbon that is at jeopardy, the impacts on human welfare, and the conservation funds spent,” said Kontoleon. “A vital ingredient for the success of the research projects in providing reliable assessments is the degree of collaboration, nurtured by CCI, between academia and conservation organisations, which cannot be taken lightly.”

Innovative approaches for protecting the future of Sierra Leone’s Gola Forest – globally important for its biodiversity and its carbon reserves – are being developed by a collaboration of conservation agencies and ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers.

Our goal is to find a mechanism by which richer countries can help one of the poorest countries in the world protect its nature at the same time as improving the livelihoods of the local communities.

Dr Jeremy Lindsell (RSPB)

Jeremy Lindsell

Gola Forest

CCI: collaboration and funding

CCI is a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and nine internationally renowned conservation organisations in the Cambridge area committed to the study and protection of global biodiversity. ̽��ֱ��founder members of CCI are:

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge: six Departments – Zoology, Geography, Plant Sciences, Land Economy, Judge Business School and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership – founded the Cambridge Conservation Initiative along with the partner organisations listed below. Each of these departments has a growing programme of research and teaching in conservation, and work closely together on interdisciplinary programmes as part of CCI.

United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre: a branch of the United Nations that undertakes synthesis, analysis and dissemination of global biodiversity knowledge for conventions, countries, organisations and companies.

Fauna and Flora International: acts to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, delivering global and regional programmes of conservation and community projects.

BirdLife International: is a strategic global partnership of conservation organisations in over 100 countries, working to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, and to promote sustainability in the use of natural resources.

Traffic International: is a global wildlife trade monitoring network that works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.

International Union for Conservation of Nature: is the world’s largest professional global conservation network, and supports scientific research, manages field projects and unites conservationists to develop and implement policy, laws and best practice.

Tropical Biology Association: is dedicated to building the capacity and expertise of people and institutions to conserve and manage biodiversity in tropical regions.

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB): is the largest wildlife conservation organisation in Europe, and works to secure the conservation of biodiversity – especially wild birds and their habitats – through research, education, habitat management and advocacy.

British Trust for Ornithology: is an independent scientific research trust specialising in impartial evidence-based knowledge and advice about populations, movements and ecology of birds and other wildlife.

Cambridge Conservation Forum: is a network that links the diverse Cambridge-based community of conservation practitioners and researchers working at local, national and international levels.

To deliver its ambitious programme CCI works closely with like-minded funding partners. CCI is particularly grateful to Arcadia, who has provided core support for the leadership of CCI and grants for the CCI Collaborative Fund, the Miriam Rothschild Programme for Conservation Leadership, the Miriam Rothschild Travel Bursaries for the Student Conference in Conservation Science and the Miriam Rothschild PhD Studentships. CCI is also deeply grateful to the MAVA Fondation pour la Nature for their support to establishment a unique MPhil in Conservation Leadership.

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