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Conservation actions need to be prioritized, often taking into account species' extinction risk. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List provides an accepted, objective framework for the assessment of extinction risk. Assessments based on data collected in the field are the best option, but the field data to base these on are often limited. Information collected through remote sensing can be used in place of field data to inform assessments. Forests are perhaps the best-studied land-cover type for use of remote-sensing data. Using an open-access 30-m resolution map of tree cover and its change between 2000 and 2012, we assessed the extent of forest cover and loss within the distributions of 11,186 forest-dependent amphibians, birds, and mammals worldwide. For 16 species, forest loss resulted in an elevated extinction risk under red-list criterion A, owing to inferred rapid population declines. This number increased to 23 when data-deficient species (i.e., those with insufficient information for evaluation) were included. Under red-list criterion B2, 484 species (855 when data-deficient species were included) were considered at elevated extinction risk, owing to restricted areas of occupancy resulting from little forest cover remaining within their ranges. The proportion of species of conservation concern would increase by 32.8% for amphibians, 15.1% for birds, and 24.7% for mammals if our suggested uplistings are accepted. Central America, the Northern Andes, Madagascar, the Eastern Arc forests in Africa, and the islands of Southeast Asia are hotspots for these species. Our results illustrate the utility of satellite imagery for global extinction-risk assessment and measurement of progress toward international environmental agreement targets. Las acciones de conservación necesitan ser priorizadas, considerando con frecuencia el riesgo de extinción de las especies. La Lista Roja de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN) proporciona un marco de trabajo objetivo y aceptado para la valoración del riesgo de extinción. Las valoraciones basadas en los datos colectados en el campo son la mejor opción, pero los datos de campo sobre los cuales basar las valoraciones con frecuencia son limitados. Los datos colectados por medio de la teledetección pueden usarse en lugar de los datos de campo para informar a las valoraciones. Los bosques tal vez sean el tipo de cubierta de suelo mejor estudiado para el uso de datos de teledetección. Con un mapa de acceso abierto y resolución de 30-m de la cobertura de árboles y su cambio entre 2000 y 2012, valoramos la extensión de la cobertura de bosque y la pérdida dentro de las distribuciones de 11, 186 especies de anfibios, aves y mamíferos dependientes del bosque a nivel mundial. Para 16 especies, la pérdida del bosque resultó en un riesgo de extinción elevado, bajo el criterio A de la lista roja, debido a las declinaciones rápidas de población inferidas. Este número incrementó a 23 cuando las especies con deficiencia de datos (es decir, aquellas con información insuficiente para su evaluación) fueron incluidas. Bajo el criterio B2 de la lista roja, 484 especies (855 cuando se incluyeron las especies con deficiencia de datos) se consideraron con riesgo alto de extinción, debido a las áreas restringidas de ocupación como resultado de la pequeña cobertura del bosque que permanece dentro de su distribución. La proporción de especies de interés para la conservación incrementaría en 32.8 % para los anfibios, 15.1 % para las aves y 24.7 % para los mamíferos si nuestros cambios de categoria sugeridos son aceptados. America Central, los Andes del norte, Madagascar, los bosques del Arco Oriental de África y las islas del sureste asiático son puntos clave para estas especies. Nuestros resultados ilustran la utilidad de las imágenes satelitales para la valoración global de la extinción de riesgo y para la medición del progreso hacia los objetivos de los acuerdos ambientales internacionales.

Background Numerous studies have examined the role of community health workers (CHWs) in improving the delivery of health services and accelerating progress towards national and international development goals. A limited but growing body of studies have also explored the interactions between CHWs’ personal, communal and professional identities and the implications of these for their profession. CHWs possess multiple, overlapping roles and identities, which makes them effective primary health care providers when properly supported with adequate resources, but it also limits their ability to implement interventions that only target certain members of their community, follow standard business working days and hours. In some situations, it even prevents them from performing certain duties when it comes to sensitive topics such as family planning. Methods To understand the multiple identities of CHWs, a mixture of qualitative and ethnographic methods was utilized, such as participant observation, open-ended and semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions with CHWs, their supervisors, and their clients. The observation period began in October 2013 and ended in June 2014. This study was based on implementation research conducted by the Connect Project in Rufiji, Ulanga and Kilombero Districts in Tanzania and aimed to understand the role of CHWs in the provision of maternal and child health services in rural areas. Results To our knowledge, this was the first study that employed an ethnographic approach to examine the relationship between personal, communal and professional identities, and its implications for CHWs’ work in Tanzania. Our findings suggest that it is difficult to distinguish between personal and professional identities among CHWs in rural areas. Important aspects of CHW services such as personalization, access, and equity of health services were influenced by CHWs’ position as local agents. However, the study also found that their personal identity sometimes inhibited CHWs in speaking about issues related to family planning and sexual health. Being local, CHWs were viewed according to the social norms of the area that consider the gender and age of each worker, which tended to constrain their work in family planning and other areas. Furthermore, the communities welcomed and valued CHWs when they had curative medicines; however, when medical stocks were delayed, the community viewed the CHWs with suspicion and disinterest. Community members who received curative services from CHWs also tended to become more receptive to their preventative health care work. Conclusion Although CHWs’ multiple roles constrained certain aspects of their work in line with prevalent social norms, overall, the multiple roles they fulfilled had a positive effect by keeping CHWs embedded in their community and earned them trust from community members, which enhanced their ability to provide personalized, equitable and relevant services. However, CHWs needed a support system that included functional supply chains, supervision, and community support to help them retain their role as health care providers and enabled them to provide curative, preventative, and referral services.

Accurate maps of species ranges are essential to inform conservation, but time-consuming to produce and update. Given the pace of change of knowledge about species distributions and shifts in ranges under climate change and land use, a need exists for timely mapping approaches that enable batch processing employing widely available data. We develop a systematic approach of batch-processing range maps and derived Area of Habitat maps for terrestrial bird species with published ranges below 125,000 km 2 in Central and South America. (Area of Habitat is the habitat available to a species within its range.) We combine existing range maps with the rapidly expanding crowd-sourced eBird data of presences and absences from frequently surveyed locations, plus readily accessible, high resolution satellite data on forest cover and elevation to map the Area of Habitat available to each species. Users can interrogate the maps produced to see details of the observations that contributed to the ranges. Previous estimates of Areas of Habitat were constrained within the published ranges and thus were, by definition, smaller—typically about 30%. This reflects how little habitat within suitable elevation ranges exists within the published ranges. Our results show that on average, Areas of Habitat are 12% larger than published ranges, reflecting the often-considerable extent that eBird records expand the known distributions of species. Interestingly, there are substantial differences between threatened and non-threatened species. Some 40% of Critically Endangered, 43% of Endangered, and 55% of Vulnerable species have Areas of Habitat larger than their published ranges, compared with 31% for Near Threatened and Least Concern species. The important finding for conservation is that threatened species are generally more widespread than previously estimated.

Background Malnutrition has long been associated with poverty, poor diet and inadequate access to health care, and it remains a key global health issue that both stems from and contributes to ill-health, with 50 % of childhood deaths due to underlying undernutrition. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of malnutrition among children under-five seen at Bagamoyo District Hospital (BDH) and three rural health facilities ranging between 25 and 55 km from Bagamoyo: Kiwangwa, Fukayosi, and Yombo. Methods A total of 63,237 children under-five presenting to Bagamoyo District Hospital and the three rural health facilities participated in the study. Anthropometric measures of age, height/length and weight and measurements of mid-upper arm circumference were obtained and compared with reference anthropometric indices to assess nutritional status for patients presenting to the hospital and health facilities. Results Overall proportion of stunting, underweight and wasting was 8.37, 5.74 and 1.41 % respectively. Boys were significantly more stunted, under weight and wasted than girls ( p -value < 0.05). Children aged 24–59 months were more underweight than 6–23 months ( p -value = <0.0001). But, there was no statistical significance difference between the age groups for stunting and wasting. Children from rural areas experienced increased rates of stunting, underweight and wasting than children in urban areas ( p -value < 0.05). The results of this study concur with other studies that malnutrition remains a problem within Tanzania; however our data suggests that the population presenting to BDH and rural health facilities presented with decreased rates of malnutrition compared to the general population. Conclusions Hospital and facility attending populations of under-five children in and around Bagamoyo suffer moderately high rates of malnutrition. Current nutrition programs focus on education for at risk children and referral to regional hospitals for malnourished children. Even though the general population has even greater malnutrition than the population presenting at the hospital, in areas of high malnutrition, hospital-based interventions should also be considered as centralized locations for reaching thousands of malnourished children under-five.

This paper reports and examines the results of qualitative research on the use of local cancer terminology in urban Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Following recent calls to unify evidence and dignity-based practices in global health, this research locates local medical sociolinguistics as a key place of entry into creating epistemologically autonomous public health practices. We used semistructured ethnographic interviews to reveal both the contextual and broader patterns related to use of local cancer terminologies among residents of Dunda Ward in urban Bagamoyo. Our findings suggest that people in Bagamoyo employ diverse terms to describe and make meanings about cancer that do not neatly fit with biomedical paradigms. This research not only opens further investigation about how ordinary people speak and make sense of the emerging cancer epidemic in places like Tanzania, but also is a window into otherwise conceptualisations of ‘intervention’ onto people in formerly colonised regions to improve a health situation. We argue that adapting biomedical concepts into local sociolinguistic and knowledge structures is an essential task in creating dignity-based, evidence-informed practices in global health.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259299.].

WHO defines vaccine hesitancy as delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services. It is a complex phenomenon that varies through time, place and vaccines. In this comment, we highlight the context-specific variation of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in Tanzania. We suggest Covid-19 hesitancy in Tanzania is influenced with high burden of infectious disease, poor testing capabilities and demographic characteristics.

Ensuring the conservation of wild relatives of domesticated animals that are important food sources for humans forms part of targets for both the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There is, however, no indicator allowing progress toward these aims to be measured. We identified 30 domesticated mammal and bird taxa that are sources of food for humans and consider 55 mammal and 449 bird species to be their wild relatives. We developed a Red List Index for these wild relatives, which declined by 2.02% between 1988 and 2016. Currently, 15 species are Critically Endangered, indicating that the Red List Index could deteriorate sharply unless action is taken to ensure the survival of highly threatened species and the reversal of their declines. This Index can meet a range of global policy needs, including reporting on progress toward Aichi Target 13 of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and SDG Target 2.5.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259299.].

WHO defines vaccine hesitancy as delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services. It is a complex phenomenon that varies through time, place and vaccines. In this comment, we highlight the context-specific variation of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in Tanzania. We suggest Covid-19 hesitancy in Tanzania is influenced with high burden of infectious disease, poor testing capabilities and demographic characteristics.Principaux facteurs expliquant l’hésitation vaccinale contre la Covid-19 en TanzanieL’OMS définit l’hésitation vaccinale comme un retard dans l’acceptation ou le refus des vaccins malgré la disponibilité des services de vaccination. C’est un phénomène complexe qui varie en fonction du temps, du lieu et des vaccins. Dans cette tribune, nous mettons en évidence la variation spécifique contextuelle de la réticence au vaccin Covid-19 en Tanzanie. Nous suggérons que l’hésitation vaccinale contre la Covid-19 en Tanzanie est influencée par une charge élevée de maladies infectieuses, de faibles capacités de test et des caractéristiques démographiques.