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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Musculoskeletal conditions are the leading cause of disability worldwide and disproportionally affect individuals in low-income and middle-income countries. There is a dearth of evidence on musculoskeletal problems among refugees, 74% of whom reside in low-income and middle-income countries.
Questions/purposes: (1) What proportion of refugees in Nyarugusu Camp, Kigoma, western Tanzania, are affected by musculoskeletal problems and what are the characteristics of those individuals? (2) What are the characteristics of these musculoskeletal problems, including their causes, location, and duration? (3) What forms of healthcare do those with musculoskeletal problems seek, including those for both musculoskeletal and nonmusculoskeletal problems?
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study among refugees in Nyarugusu Camp, using the Surgeons OverSeas Assessment of Surgical Need tool.
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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction/background: Since 2020, China has implemented unprecedented digital health surveillance over citizens and residents in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. We explore the implementation of Health Code (), a contract-tracing and risk assessment app for coronavirus disease 2019, in China. By engaging with the concept of 'ocular ethics', we ask why and how some populations become invisible in China's Health Code surveillance system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: African migrants in China face social, structural, and cultural barriers to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing with scarce information on their HIV testing behaviours. This study estimated the prevalence of HIV testing and its social and behavioural correlates to understand how to better provide HIV testing services for African migrants living in China.
Methods: We conducted a national cross-sectional survey among adult African migrants who lived in China for more than one month between January 19 to February 7, 2021.
NGOs recruit religious leaders as health actors in Sub-Saharan Africa. Program designers both construct religious leaders as opponents of family planning interventions who discourage their congregants from using family planning and as proponents who persuade their congregants to use them. This article investigates a family planning project that recruited religious leaders in Morogoro, Tanzania.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In order to prevent overburdening of higher levels of care, national healthcare systems rely on processes of referral, including for refugee populations which number 26 million globally. The goal of this study is to use data from a population-based household survey to describe patterns of referral services among a population of Congolese and Burundian refugees living in Tanzania.
Design: Cross-sectional survey using cluster randomised sampling.
Background: Malaria is one of the prime reasons for medical consultation and the major cause of morbidity and mortality in Mali. To assess and understand the dynamics of social representations of malaria, the anthropological research was conducted in the Wayerema II neighbourhood of the health district of Sikasso, southern Mali.
Methods: This was an ethnographic study conducted qualitatively in 2011 and 2016 through informal conversations, 70 semi-structured interviews, and participant observations with key actors.
Importance: Surgery is a foundational aspect to high functioning health care systems. In the wake of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, previous research has focused on defining the burden of surgical conditions among a pediatric population, however these studies often fail to include forced migrant or refugees. The goal of this study was to estimate the prevalence of pediatric surgical conditions among refugees in east Africa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite significant advances in the understanding of the global burden of surgical disease, limited research focuses on access to health and surgical services among refugees, especially in east Africa. The goal of this study was to describe patterns of access to transportation to health services among Congolese and Burundian refugees in Tanzania. We utilized cluster random sampling to perform a large, cross-sectional study in Nyarugusu refugee camp, Tanzania using an adapted version of the Surgeon Overseas Assessment Tool (SOSAS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The goal of this study was to estimate the prevalence of surgical conditions among refugees in East Africa.
Background: Surgery is a foundational aspect to high functioning health care systems. In the wake of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, previous research has focused on defining the burden of surgical conditions in low- and middle-income countries.
In the past two decades, religious leaders have garnered increased interest from health ministries and NGOs as promoters, educators, and implementers of sensitive health programs such as family planning in several African countries. While religious leaders' role as public health actors has been well-documented, there are few ethnographic accounts of how religious leaders engage with public health programs, especially family planning. Informed by twelve months of ethnographic study in three rural and peri-urban locations in Kilombero district in 2014-2016, this article examines how Muslim religious leaders experienced and negotiated their role as implementers of family planning services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: 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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Subsistence rice farmers in south-eastern Tanzania are often migratory, spending weeks or months tending to crops in distant fields along the river valleys and living in improvised structures known as Shamba huts, not fully protected from mosquitoes. These farmers also experience poor access to organized preventive and curative services due to long distances. Mosquito biting exposure in these rice fields, relative to main village residences was assessed, then a portable mosquito-proof hut was developed and tested for protecting these migratory farmers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: 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.