The bushmeat industry has been a topic of increasing importance among both conservationists and public health officials for its influence on zoonotic disease transmission and animal conservation. While the association between infectious diseases and the bushmeat trade is well established in the research community, risk perception among bushmeat hunters and traders has not been well characterized. I conducted surveys of 123 bushmeat hunters and traders in rural Sierra Leone to investigate hunting practices and awareness of zoonotic disease risk associated with the bushmeat trade. Twenty-four percent of bushmeat hunters and traders reported knowledge of disease transmission from animals to humans.
Formal education did not significantly affect awareness of zoonotic disease transmission. Individuals who engaged exclusively in preparation and trading of bushmeat were more likely to accidentally cut themselves compared to those who primarily engaged in bushmeat hunting (P < 0.001). In addition,
Rift Valley Fever (RVF), is a viral zoonotic disease transmitted by Aedes and Culex mosquitoes. in Kenya, its occurrence is associated with increased rains. in Baringo County, RVF was first reported in 2006-2007 resulting in 85 human cases and 5 human deaths, besides livestock losses and livelihood disruptions. This study sought to investigate the county’s current RVF risk status.
A cross-sectional study on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of RVF was conducted through a mixed methods approach utilizing a questionnaire survey (n = 560) and 26 focus group discussions (n = 231). Results indicate that study participants had little knowledge of RVF causes, its signs and symptoms and transmission mechanisms to humans and livestock. However, most of them indicated that a person could be infected with zoonotic diseases through consumption of meat (79.2%) and milk (73.7%) or contact with blood (40%) from sick animals.
Interdisciplinary research on zoonotic disease has tended to focus on ‘risk’ of disease transmission as a conceptual common denominator. With reference to endemic zoonoses at the livestock-human interface, we argue for considering a broader sweep of disciplinary insights from anthropology and other social sciences in interdisciplinary dialogue, in particular cross-cultural perspectives on human-animal engagement. We consider diverse worldviews where human-animal encounters are perceived of in terms of the kinds of social relations they generate, and the notion of culture is extended to the ‘natural’ world.
This has implications for how animals are valued, treated and prioritized. Thinking differently with and about animals and about species’ boundaries could enable ways of addressing zoonotic diseases which have closer integration with people’s own cultural norms. If we can bring this kind of knowledge into One Health debates, we find ourselves with a multiplicity of worldviews,
Zoonotic diseases currently pose both major health threats and complex scientific and policy challenges, to which modelling is increasingly called to respond. In this article we argue that the challenges are best met by combining multiple models and modelling approaches that elucidate the various epidemiological, ecological and social processes at work. These models should not be understood as neutral science informing policy in a linear manner, but as having social and political lives: social, cultural and political norms and values that shape their development and which they carry and project.
We develop and illustrate this argument in relation to the cases of H5N1 avian influenza and Ebola, exploring for each the range of modelling approaches deployed and the ways they have been co-constructed with a particular politics of policy. Addressing the complex, uncertain dynamics of zoonotic disease requires such social and political lives to be made explicit in approaches that aim at triangulation rather than integration,
Over the last decade, the avian influenza virus, H5N1, has spread across most of Asia and Europe and parts of Africa. In some countries – including Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt – the avian disease has probably become endemic. There has, as yet, been no human pandemic, although 245 deaths have been reported since 2003. A major international response has been launched, backed by over $2 billion of public money. Huge numbers of poultry have been culled, vaccination campaigns have been implemented and markets have been restructured. These efforts have affected the livelihoods and businesses of millions. In addition, substantial efforts have been invested in improving human and animal health systems, combined with major investments in drug and vaccine development.
Detailed contingency and preparedness plans have been devised in case a pandemic occurs. This paper asks: what lessons can we learn from this experience,
This thesis examines the Influenza A/H5N1 virus in action through an ethnographic study focused on the entwined concepts of risk and modernity. The objective is to explain why the response to the virus has been challenged in Indonesia.
Concerned with policy formulation, and everyday practice, the thesis argues that assemblages of historical, political, institutional and knowledge‐power processes create multiple hybrid constructions of risk and modernity, which challenge technical responses based on epistemological positions and institutional arrangements that do not allow for such hybridity.
As a country suffering from large-scale AI outbreaks and receiving considerable international support, Vietnam provides a crucial case not to be missed in any analysis of the global AI crisis. Vietnam is also interesting because of two paradoxes in her response to AI. Despite being poor, Vietnam selected the most expensive approach (comprehensive vaccination) to disease control. Despite substantial foreign aid and praise lavished on Vietnam, and despite a tough strategy, Vietnam has not performed better than neighbouring countries in keeping the epidemic from coming back. Based on interviews of various stakeholders and newspaper sources since 2003, this paper analyses the timeline of major events, key narratives driving the debate, and the main actor networks in the policy process.
The author found Vietnam’s AI policy process was characterised by top down/technical perspectives supported by the central government and foreign donors. These narratives reinforced the political interests of a national/international elite.
Examining the political economy of knowledge in responses to the 2009-10 influenza pandemic, this paper argues that globally, and in many individual nations, techno-scientific narratives constructed by bio-medical actor networks failed to correspond with the more variegated narratives of multifarious global publics, and so struggled to recruit support and maintain credibility and authority.With reductive narratives constructed by bio-medical actor networks confounded by the uncertainties intrinsic to the influenza virus, the complexities of the disease in individuals, and compromised by continuing ignorance, political and cultural forces became dominant.Universalistic, one-size-fits-all responses drawn from reductive science are therefore argued to be insufficient, and possibly misguided. Planning and response efforts must consider diverse local settings and concerns. Reductive technical framings emerging from tight, unreflexive actor networks may prevent other options from emerging, and limit response pathways.
Such narrow,technocratic responses are not only at odds with the varied understandings,