Pastoralists' perceptions on the impact of Rift valley fever disease following an outbreak in North Eastern Kenya
Abstract
Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic disease which leads to livestock losses and human fatalities, thus impoverishing pastoralists who largely depend on livestock for their livelihood. These losses lead to both short- and long-term effects that perpetuate poverty and disrupt family order and structure. We used qualitative methods to understand the lived experiences of pastoralists with RVF after a major outbreak in Kenya. Using narratives, we identified the social, economic and psychological effects of this disease, while focus group discussions helped us to understand the experiences of the pastoralists during and after an outbreak. The major impacts were deprivation and impoverishment, abrupt disruption to their way of life and family dynamics and mistrust of the formal healthcare system. The latter was related to the isolation of patients and the presence of foreign medical personnel in the area that fueled mistrust. Efforts need to be made by public health practitioners and policy-makers to enhance dialogue between clinicians and pastoralists and to come up with practical ways of improving local people’s livelihoods during and after an RVF epidemic.
Citation
Mburu , C , Bukachi , S A & Bett , B 2022 , ' Pastoralists' perceptions on the impact of Rift valley fever disease following an outbreak in North Eastern Kenya ' , Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice , vol. 12 , 24 . https://doi.org/10.1186/s13570-022-00239-3
Publication
Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2041-7136Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s). 2022 Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Description
This work was funded under the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium (DDDAC), NERC project Number NE-J001570-1. This was funded with support from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme. The ESPA programme was financed by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).Collections
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