Author Correction: A Geodetic Strain Rate Model for the East African Rift System.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Private water distribution as a potential everyday risk: The case of Goba, Dar es Salaam.

A large number of peri-urban settlements in developing countries, including Goba in Tanzania, fall short of government supplied water. The inability of the Government to budget and prioritise its budget poses a serious problem to meet the water demand, a few residents in peri-urban settlements use other sources of water, including groundwater. However, the quality and suitability safety of such groundwater are questionable.

Men's participation in maternal and child health care in Western Uganda: perspectives from the community.

Background: Participation of men in Maternal and Child Health (MCH) is crucial for the reduction of infant and maternal mortality. Men may be influential in making health care decisions that may affect their female partner's access to health care services, but also as individuals, whose health status has a significant impact on the health of their partners' and that of their children. However, male involvement is still inadequate due to various reasons.

Review of studies on outdoor thermal comfort in warm humid climates: challenges of informal urban fabric.

In warm humid climate regions where majority of the population spend most of the time outdoors, an adequate outdoor thermal environment is crucial. A number of studies on outdoor thermal comfort in warm humid climates were carried out in the past decade. However, most of these studies focused on the formal urban fabric and left the informal urban fabric, where typically 30 to 85% of the population in developing countries resides, unattended.

Willingness and Barriers to Voluntary Counselling and Testing Among Self-Perceived Healthy Adults in Tanzania.

Background: Despite the ongoing efforts to promote HIV testing, the majority of adults in Tanzania remain untested, and many remain unwilling to know their HIV status. Understanding the underlying reasons for this unwillingness to test and know one's status will support the development of targeted interventions to promote the uptake of HIV testing. This paper explores the willingness of and barriers faced by self-perceived healthy individuals to test for HIV in selected districts of Tanzania.

Are health care facilities and programs in Western Uganda encouraging or discouraging men's participation in maternal and child health care?

Introduction: In patriarchal communities, men are in control of health care decisions of their families. As spouses, their health status impacts on the health of their partners and children as well. The participation of men in maternal and child health (MCH) is thus crucial for the reduction of infant and maternal mortality, as spouses and parents.

Urban fire risk control: House design, upgrading and replanning.

Urbanisation leads to house densification, a phenomenon experienced in both planned and unplanned settlements in cities in developing countries. Such densification limits fire brigade access into settlements, thereby aggravating fire disaster risks. In this article, we assess the fire exposure and risks in residences in informal areas of Mchikichini ward, in Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania.

How emergency managers (mis?)interpret forecasts.

Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical frontline responders to disasters. Yet, while these professionals operate in a realm rife with uncertainty related to forecasts and other unknowns, the influence of uncertainty on their decision-making is poorly understood. Consequently, a national-level survey of county emergency managers in the United States was administered to examine how they interpret forecast information, using hypothetical climate, flood, and weather scenarios to simulate their responses to uncertain information.

Topographic mapping of the interfaces between human and aquatic mosquito habitats to enable barrier targeting of interventions against malaria vectors.

Geophysical topographic metrics of local water accumulation potential are freely available and have long been known as high-resolution predictors of where aquatic habitats for immature mosquitoes are most abundant, resulting in elevated densities of adult malaria vectors and human infection burden. Using existing entomological and epidemiological survey data, here we illustrate how topography can also be used to map out the interfaces between wet, unoccupied valleys and dry, densely populated uplands, where malaria vector densities and infection risk are focally exacerbated. These topographically identifiable geophysical boundaries experience disproportionately high vector densities and malaria transmission risk, because this is where mosquitoes first encounter humans when they search for blood after emerging or ovipositing in the valleys.

A Geodetic Strain Rate Model for the East African Rift System.

Here we describe the new Sub-Saharan Africa Geodetic Strain Rate Model v.1.0 (SSA-GSRM v.

Contributing to the debate on categorising shared sanitation facilities as 'unimproved': An account based on field researchers' observations and householders' opinions in three regions, Tanzania.

Background: Health risks associated with poor sanitation behaviours continue to be reported mostly from low-income countries (LICs). Reports show that various factors limit many people from accessing and using improved latrines, forcing some to opt for sharing latrines with neighbours, others practicing open defecation. Meanwhile, debate prevails on whether shared latrines should be categorised as unimproved according to WHO/UNICEF-JMP criteria.

Microbial fuel cells for inexpensive continuous in-situ monitoring of groundwater quality.

Online monitoring of groundwater quality in shallow wells to detect faecal or organic pollution could dramatically improve understanding of health risks in unplanned peri-urban settlements. Microbial fuel cells (MFC) are devices able to generate electricity from the organic matter content in faecal pollution making them suitable as biosensors. In this work, we evaluate the suitability of four microbial fuel cell systems placed in different regions of a groundwater well for the low-cost monitoring of a faecal pollution event.

Fire disaster preparedness and situational analysis in higher learning institutions of Tanzania.

Fire disasters are accompanied with devastating impact affecting both lives and properties. The magnitude of the impacts has been severe in places with low levels of fire disaster preparedness. A study was conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to investigate the level of fire disaster preparedness considering the availability and condition of firefighting facilities as well as the knowledge on fire management among the selected 10 higher learning institutions.

Crowdsourcing Vector Surveillance: Using Community Knowledge and Experiences to Predict Densities and Distribution of Outdoor-Biting Mosquitoes in Rural Tanzania.

Lack of reliable techniques for large-scale monitoring of disease-transmitting mosquitoes is a major public health challenge, especially where advanced geo-information systems are not regularly applicable. We tested an innovative crowd-sourcing approach, which relies simply on knowledge and experiences of residents to rapidly predict areas where disease-transmitting mosquitoes are most abundant. Guided by community-based resource persons, we mapped boundaries and major physical features in three rural Tanzanian villages.

Spatially aggregated clusters and scattered smaller loci of elevated malaria vector density and human infection prevalence in urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Background: Malaria transmission, primarily mediated by Anopheles gambiae, persists in Dar es Salaam (DSM) despite high coverage with bed nets, mosquito-proofed housing and larviciding. New or improved vector control strategies are required to eliminate malaria from DSM, but these will only succeed if they are delivered to the minority of locations where residual transmission actually persists. Hotspots of spatially clustered locations with elevated malaria infection prevalence or vector densities were, therefore, mapped across the city in an attempt to provide a basis for targeting supplementary interventions.

Microbiological effectiveness of household water treatment technologies under field use conditions in rural Tanzania.

Objectives: To assess the microbiological effectiveness of several household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) options in situ in Tanzania, before consideration for national scale-up of HWTS.

Methods: Participating households received supplies and instructions for practicing six HWTS methods on a rotating 5-week basis. We analysed 1202 paired samples (source and treated) of drinking water from 390 households, across all technologies.

Spatial distribution of temporal dynamics in anthropogenic fires in miombo savanna woodlands of Tanzania.

Background: Anthropogenic uses of fire play a key role in regulating fire regimes in African savannas. These fires contribute the highest proportion of the globally burned area, substantial biomass burning emissions and threaten maintenance and enhancement of carbon stocks. An understanding of fire regimes at local scales is required for the estimation and prediction of the contribution of these fires to the global carbon cycle and for fire management.

Point-of-use chlorination of turbid water: results from a field study in Tanzania.

Household-based chlorine disinfection is widely effective against waterborne bacteria and viruses, and may be among the most inexpensive and accessible options for household water treatment. The microbiological effectiveness of chlorine is limited, however, by turbidity. In Tanzania, there are no guidelines on water chlorination at household level, and limited data on whether dosing guidelines for higher turbidity waters are sufficient to produce potable water.

Antifungal Enantiomeric Styrylpyrones from Sanrafaelia ruffonammari and Ophrypetalum odoratum.

Phytochemical investigation of Sanrafaelia ruffonammari Verd and Ophrypetalum odoratum Diels that belongs to the rare genera confined to East African coastal forests led to the isolation of enantiomeric styrylpyrone dimer, (±)-5-methoxy-7-phenyl-[4-methoxy-2-pyronyl]-1-(E)-styryl-2-oxabicyclo-[4.2.0]-octa-4-en-3-one (1) alongside (+)-6-styryl-7,8-epoxy-4-methoxypyran-2-one (2) and the enantiomeric (+)- (3) and (-)-6-styryl-7,8-dihydroxy-4-methoxypyran-2-ones (4).

The impact of cost recovery and sharing system on water policy implementation and human right to water: a case of Ileje, Tanzania.

In Tanzania, the National Water Policy (NAWAPO) of 2002 clearly stipulates that access to water supply and sanitation is a right for every Tanzanian and that cost recovery is the foundation of sustainable service delivery. To meet these demands, water authorities have introduced cost recovery and a water sharing system. The overall objective of this study was to assess the impact of cost recovery and the sharing system on water policy implementation and human rights to water in four villages in the Ileje district.

Antimosquito and antimicrobial clerodanoids and a chlorobenzenoid from Tessmannia species.

The clerodane diterpenoids trans-kolavenolic acid, 18-oxocleroda-3,13(E)-dien-15-oic acid, ent-(18-hydroxycarbonyl)-cleroda-3,13(E)-dien-15-oate, 2-oxo-ent-cleroda-3,13(Z)-dien-15-oic acid and trans-2-oxo-ent-cleroda-13(Z)-en-15-oic acid, and the chlorobenzenoid O-(3-hydroxy-4-hydroxycarbonyl-5-pentylphenyl)-3-chloro-4-methoxy-6-pentyl-2-oxybenzoic acid were isolated from Tessmannia martiniana var pauloi and T. martiniana var matiniana. Structures were established based on interpretation of spectroscopic data.

Potential of constructed wetland systems for treating tannery industrial wastewater.

This paper reports on findings of a study on the performance of two units of a Horizontal Sub-Surface Flow Constructed Wetland (HSSFCW) units in treating wastewater effluent from a tannery industry. One of the HSSFCW units was planted with macrophytes, while the other was used as a control (without plants). Wastewater was fed into the wetland units at the mean flow rate of 0.

Problems of solid waste management on Mount Kilimanjaro: a challenge to tourism.

We report on the findings of a study on the problems of solid waste management (SWM) on Mountain Kilimanjaro (MK) which is located within Kilimanjaro National Park (KINAPA) in Northern Tanzania. The study was prompted by the fact that flourishing tourism on the mountain over the years has resulted in an increase in the tonnage of solid waste (SW) generated, posing serious challenges in its collection and disposal. The methodology employed in this study included physical observations and questionnaire surveys, as well as waste sorting and weighing to quantify and characterize waste loads collected from each tourist route station covered in this study.

Anti-mosquito and antimicrobial nor-halimanoids, isocoumarins and an anilinoid from Tessmannia densiflora.

The nor-halimane diterpenoid tessmannic acid and its methyl, 2-methylisopropyl and 1-methylbutyl esters, the unusual isocoumarins 8-hydroxy-6-methoxy-3-pentylisocoumarin and 7-chloro-8-hydroxy-6-methoxy-3-pentylisocoumarin, and 5-pentyl-3-methoxy-N-butylaniline were isolated from the stem and root bark extracts of Tessmannia densiflora Harms (Caesalpiniaceae) that showed mosquito larvicidal activity. The structures were determined on interpretation of spectroscopic data. Tessmannic acid and its methyl ester exhibited antibacterial and antifungal activity.