Baobab Index

Malaria remains a significant public health challenge in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), particularly among pregnant women and children under 5, who bear the highest burden of disease and mortality. Despite efforts to scale up control programs, the country faces numerous challenges, including limited healthcare access, inadequate funding, insecticide resistance, and gaps in surveillance. Vector control efforts are constrained by minimal government involvement and heavy reliance on international donors. Recent innovations, such as genomic surveillance, rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), and mobile health (mHealth) solutions, offer new avenues for improving diagnosis, treatment, and data collection. Integrated approaches, such as incorporating malaria prevention into routine maternal and child healthcare, expanding access to vaccines like RTS,S and R21, and improving the distribution of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs), are vital for sustaining control efforts. Community engagement and behavior change strategies are crucial to increasing uptake of preventive measures. Furthermore, climate change necessitates adaptable interventions to address shifting transmission patterns. Strengthening surveillance, training community health workers, and fostering public-private-philanthropic partnerships will enhance capacity for malaria control. Sustainable financing, policy reinforcement, and innovative tools are essential to prevent resurgence and protect vulnerable populations, ensuring progress toward malaria elimination in DR Congo. This review uniquely aims to address and consolidate evidence on pregnant women and young children in the DR Congo context, highlighting innovations and donor-dependence risks."

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Infantile exocrine pancreatic insufficiency is a rare condition, most often encountered in the context of cystic fibrosis or Shwachman-Diamond syndrome. The

Decentralized diagnostics are essential for the timely detection and control of mpox outbreaks. Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) transitioned from centralized testing to decentralized models using GeneXpert platforms, mobile labs, and real-time feedback systems. Burundi expanded from one to 56 diagnostic sites, reducing site-level turnaround times to 2-4 h and achieving nearly 100% testing coverage. The DRC scaled up from 2 to 28 labs, deploying multiplex platforms and stabilizing testing rates. Genomic surveillance also advanced, with over 3000 mpox virus (MPXV) genomes sequenced across 23 countries, revealing new clades and informing public health responses. Africa reached the 8% sequencing threshold, enabling real-time viral tracking. The mpox epidemic accelerated reforms, including continental guidelines for laboratory decentralization and the launch of a new initiative to expand testing, training, and local manufacturing. This article describes the mpox laboratory decentralization efforts, achievements, lessons, and best practices across Africa.

A systematic PubMed search was conducted on 1 September 2025 to identify studies on A total of 14 studies published between 2008 and 2024 met the inclusion criteria, with most (11/14) published in the last 5 years. Studies reported a high burden of Despite the high burden of

Bonobos (Pan paniscus), an endangered species, have for decades been genetically understudied, partly due to difficulties in obtaining high-quality samples. The study of their genome is important not only for understanding their evolution, but also for improving conservation efforts, including population management, diversity and inbreeding assessment, and tracking rescued individuals to combat illegal wildlife trafficking. Here, we use chromosome 21 target capture data from 156 non-invasively collected faecal samples from wild bonobos to perform a comprehensive analysis of their population structure. We confirm the existence of three previously suggested subpopulations identified here as Western, Central and Eastern bonobos which are defined by natural barriers of gene flow such as the Lomami River. By estimating levels of inbreeding, diversity and differentiation, we find support for isolation of mainly Western and Eastern populations and add information on the dispersal routes of their ancestors. We infer divergence history of these populations and apply a genetic framework to geolocalise samples of unknown origin, showing that locations of their potential origin can be estimated with a precision of down to a median of ~ 50 km. Our study provides valuable insight into the evolution and population structure of bonobos and reveals how rivers act as strong barriers between populations. It also offers resources for conservation efforts and highlights the need to monitor bonobo populations more closely, in particular isolated ones. Bonobos have been difficult to study genetically due to their remote forest habitat and endangered status. Here we used non-invasive sampling and chromosome 21 target capture sequencing to perform the most detailed analysis to date of their population structure. We find three main subpopulations and genetic differentiation influenced by river barriers, especially with populations found on the Eastern side of the Lomami river. This data will be useful for identifying the geographic origin of confiscated samples and thus aid bonobo conservation efforts.

The immense biodiversity observed in tropical forests has inspired the study of evolution since its inception, and numerous hypotheses have been generated to explain this diversity. One major driver of tropical forest biodiversity has been the repeated climatic fluctuations due to the Pleistocene glacial cycles. The Afrotropics are one region that has seen a particularly rich debate about the origin of its avifauna. Lowland and highland Afrotropical forests responded in different ways to Pleistocene climatic cycling, likely shaping the population genetic structure of species tracking these habitats. Here we study the role of shifting forests throughout the Pleistocene in shaping population genetic structure in a forest generalist, the Yellow-whiskered Greenbul (Eurillas latirostris). We sequenced genomes from individuals across the continent with forest thought to span three Pleistocene refugia. At a coarse scale, we found evidence for three lineages that expanded from these refugia, with a western lineage west of the Dahomey gap, a central lineage across the Congo Basin, and an eastern lineage in the Albertine rift and adjacent rainforest. However, finer scale analysis revealed a more complex story. First, we found that the most stable eastern lineage demonstrated population genetic structure between its montane populations. This included one population that was likely admixed between the sampled Albertine Rift locations and an unsampled region. Second, we found surprisingly strong divergence between the parapatric eastern and central lineages. However, despite this divergence, we found signals of mitochondrial introgression from the eastern lineage far into the eastern sampling localities of the central lineage. This suggests a largely untapped promise for evolutionary genomic research across the Congo Basin, where populations expanding from alternate refugia likely meet and have their species boundaries tested.

Chikungunya fever presents a diagnostic challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa due to the absence of a region-specific case definition, especially in settings with high disease burden and diverse aetiologies of acute febrile illnesses. Our study aimed to develop an evidence-based clinical case definition for acute Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infection suitable for use at resource-limited primary health care level. We conducted a cross-sectional study in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, between June and November 2019 during an ongoing CHIKV outbreak. Patients aged ≥3 years with symptoms suggestive of acute CHIKV infection were enrolled. Clinical examination data and blood samples were collected for CHIKV diagnosis via PCR and ELISA. Malaria rapid diagnostic tests were also performed. We used Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis with 10-fold cross-validation and predictive logistic regression models with lasso penalty, with performance assessed via the Area under the Receiver Operating Characteristics Curve (AUC). Of 132 analysed patients, 40.2% had acute CHIKV infection. CART analysis identified knee and shoulder pain as potential predictors, however classifying only 67.4% of patients correctly while missing 71.7% of cases (cross-validated AUC 53%; 95%CI 43%-63%). Logistic regression achieved 61.1% accuracy, with a corresponding cross-validated AUC of 62% (95%CI 52%-72%). Exploratory analysis excluding malaria co-infections yielded similar CART performance, while logistic regression failed to identify any reliable predictors. While our study provides valuable insights into the clinical presentation of CHIKV in Sub-Saharan Africa, it highlights the challenges of developing a simple symptom-based diagnostic algorithm suitable for resource-limited primary health care settings. Certain joint pain patterns showed predictive value, however no model achieved sufficient accuracy for clinical use. Improved access to serological testing and integration of epidemiological context are essential for CHIKV diagnosis in such contexts. Further research is needed to refine clinical criteria and support outbreak response in resource-limited regions.

We present complete genome sequences of 3 species of African sunbirds.