Pastoralist knowledge of sheep and goat disease and implications for peste des petits ruminants virus control in the Afar Region of Ethiopia.

Pastoralist areas of Ethiopia are vulnerable to drought, causing livelihood loss and famine. One approach to increasing pastoralist resilience is the control of livestock disease, but there is limited information from pastoralist areas to inform control strategies. This study aimed to explore pastoralist concepts of small ruminant disease and implications for infectious disease surveillance and control in the pastoralist Afar Region. During 2013-14, qualitative and quantitative methods were applied in two villages of one district in the mid-west of the region. Semi-structured group interviews, incorporating participatory tools, explored pastoralist knowledge of small ruminant diseases and their impact. These were followed by multiple visits in different seasons to 70 households for semi-structured and informal interviews, observation of management practices, clinical examinations, and weekly questionnaires of mortality and morbidity. Thematic analysis was applied to interview transcripts and field notes, and descriptive statistical analysis to quantitative data. Afar concepts of disease causation, terminology and treatment were predominantly naturalistic, related to observable signs and physical causes, rather than personalistic factors (misfortune due to magical or spiritual agents). Disease occurrence was associated with malnutrition and adverse weather, and disease spread with contact between animals during grazing, watering and migration. Disease occurrence varied by season with most syndromes increasing in frequency during the dry season. Names for disease syndromes were related to the main clinical sign or body part affected; 70 terms were recorded for respiratory syndromes, diarrhoea, sheep and goat pox, lameness, skin diseases, ectoparasites, urinary and neurological syndromes and abortion. Some syndromes with pathognomonic signs could be linked to biomedical diagnoses but most were non-specific with several possible diagnoses. The syndromes causing greatest impact were diarrhoea and respiratory disease, due to mortality, reduced milk production, weight loss, abortion, weak offspring and reduced market value. Afar applied a range of traditional methods and modern medicines to prevent or treat disease, based on livestock keeper knowledge, advice of local specialists and occasionally advice from district veterinarians or animal health workers. In relation to surveillance for peste des petits ruminants (PPR), several terms were used for PPR-like syndromes, depending on the predominance of respiratory or diarrhoea signs. Therefore, whenever these terms are encountered during surveillance, the associated disease events should be fully investigated and samples collected for laboratory confirmation. The Afar naturalistic concepts of disease parallel biomedical concepts and provide a good foundation for communication between veterinarians and pastoralists in relation to PPR surveillance and control measures.

Guiding principles for evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on human well-being.

Measures of socio-economic impacts of conservation interventions have largely been restricted to externally defined indicators focused on income, which do not reflect people's priorities. Using a holistic, locally grounded conceptualization of human well-being instead provides a way to understand the multi-faceted impacts of conservation on aspects of people's lives that they value. Conservationists are engaging with well-being for both pragmatic and ethical reasons, yet current guidance on how to operationalize the concept is limited. We present nine guiding principles based around a well-being framework incorporating material, relational and subjective components, and focused on gaining knowledge needed for decision-making. The principles relate to four key components of an impact evaluation: (i) defining well-being indicators, giving primacy to the perceptions of those most impacted by interventions through qualitative research, and considering subjective well-being, which can affect engagement with conservation; (ii) attributing impacts to interventions through quasi-experimental designs, or alternative methods such as theory-based, case study and participatory approaches, depending on the setting and evidence required; (iii) understanding the processes of change including evidence of causal linkages, and consideration of trajectories of change and institutional processes; and (iv) data collection with methods selected and applied with sensitivity to research context, consideration of heterogeneity of impacts along relevant societal divisions, and conducted by evaluators with local expertise and independence from the intervention.