Strengthening essential medicines policy to improve antivenom availability and affordability for snakebite envenomation in rural sub-Saharan Africa

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  Strengthening essential medicines policy to improve antivenom availability and affordability for snakebite envenomation in rural sub-Saharan Africa Abstract Snakebite envenomation remains a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) globally and in most sub-Saharan African countries; however, it causes the majority of morbidities, disabilities, and mortalities, affecting mostly the rural population who engage in agriculture, pastoralism, and hunting. Despite the inclusion of antivenom in the World Health Organization (WHO) Essential Medicines List, access to and affordability of safe and effective antivenom in rural areas in most sub-Saharan countries remain severely constrained by higher cost, a fragile supply chain, and policy implementation gaps. Consequently, preventable snakebite-related morbidities, mortalities, and disabilities persist in rural areas with higher incidences of snakebites. Therefore, this article examines the epidemiological burden of snakebite envenomation in rural a...

Discovery of a new species of Eomysmauchenius from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber (Araneae: Archaeidae)

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Discovery of a new species of Eomysmauchenius from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber (Araneae: Archaeidae)

Abstract

Maybe living Archaeidae is only distributed in the southern, but all their fossils have been found in the northern hemisphere. Here, we report a new well-preserved fossil specimen from Kachin amber, which was identified to be a new species of genus Eomysmauchenius Wunderlich, 2008 through a series of morphological characteristics comparison, including a strongly raised cephalic part, a sclerotized ring around the spinnerets and a pedipalpal-cheliceral stridulatory organ absence, cheliceral peg teeth in an irregular position, the distal lateral margin of chelicera with a small triangular projection, length and height almost equal opisthosoma. The discovery of this new species once again increases fossil record diversity of the family Archaeidae in the Cretaceous, and unique palp structure enrich our knowledge of juvenal male pedipalps.

Yuan Peng, Chao Shi, Xiaoxuan Long, Michael S. Engel, Shuo Wang, Discovery of a new species of Eomysmauchenius from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber (Araneae: Archaeidae), Cretaceous Research, 2023, 105703, ISSN 0195-6671, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cretres.2023.105703.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195667123002318)