A planetary health innovation for disease, food and water challenges in Africa

Jason R. Rohr (), Alexandra Sack, Sidy Bakhoum, Christopher Barrett, David Lopez-Carr, Andrew J. Chamberlin, David J. Civitello, Cledor Diatta, Molly J. Doruska, Giulio A. Leo, Christopher J. E. Haggerty, Isabel J. Jones, Nicolas Jouanard, Andrea J. Lund, Amadou T. Ly, Raphael A. Ndione, Justin V. Remais, Gilles Riveau, Anne-Marie Schacht, Momy Seck, Simon Senghor, Susanne H. Sokolow and Caitlin Wolfe
Additional contact information
Jason R. Rohr: University of Notre Dame
Alexandra Sack: University of Notre Dame
Sidy Bakhoum: Université Cheikh Anta Diop
David Lopez-Carr: University of California
Andrew J. Chamberlin: Stanford University
David J. Civitello: Emory University
Cledor Diatta: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Molly J. Doruska: Cornell University
Giulio A. Leo: Stanford University
Christopher J. E. Haggerty: University of Notre Dame
Isabel J. Jones: Stanford University
Nicolas Jouanard: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Andrea J. Lund: Stanford University
Amadou T. Ly: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Raphael A. Ndione: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Justin V. Remais: University of California
Gilles Riveau: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Anne-Marie Schacht: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Momy Seck: Station d’Innovation Aquacole
Simon Senghor: Centre de Recherche Biomédicale Espoir pour la Santé
Susanne H. Sokolow: Stanford University
Caitlin Wolfe: University of South Florida

Nature, 2023, vol. 619, issue 7971, 782-787

Abstract: Abstract Many communities in low- and middle-income countries globally lack sustainable, cost-effective and mutually beneficial solutions for infectious disease, food, water and poverty challenges, despite their inherent interdependence1–7. Here we provide support for the hypothesis that agricultural development and fertilizer use in West Africa increase the burden of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis by fuelling the growth of submerged aquatic vegetation that chokes out water access points and serves as habitat for freshwater snails that transmit Schistosoma parasites to more than 200 million people globally8–10. In a cluster randomized controlled trial (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03187366) in which we removed invasive submerged vegetation from water points at 8 of 16 villages (that is, clusters), control sites had 1.46 times higher intestinal Schistosoma infection rates in schoolchildren and lower open water access than removal sites. Vegetation removal did not have any detectable long-term adverse effects on local water quality or freshwater biodiversity. In feeding trials, the removed vegetation was as effective as traditional livestock feed but 41 to 179 times cheaper and converting the vegetation to compost provided private crop production and total (public health plus crop production benefits) benefit-to-cost ratios as high as 4.0 and 8.8, respectively. Thus, the approach yielded an economic incentive—with important public health co-benefits—to maintain cleared waterways and return nutrients captured in aquatic plants back to agriculture with promise of breaking poverty–disease traps. To facilitate targeting and scaling of the intervention, we lay the foundation for using remote sensing technology to detect snail habitats. By offering a rare, profitable, win–win approach to addressing food and water access, poverty alleviation, infectious disease control and environmental sustainability, we hope to inspire the interdisciplinary search for planetary health solutions11 to the many and formidable, co-dependent global grand challenges of the twenty-first century.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06313-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:619:y:2023:i:7971:d:10.1038_s41586-023-06313-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06313-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().