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Exploring fine-scale human and livestock movement in western Kenya

Exploring fine-scale human and livestock movement in western Kenya
Exploring fine-scale human and livestock movement in western Kenya

Human and livestock mobility are key factors in the transmission of several high-burden zoonoses such as rift valley fever and trypanosomiasis, yet our knowledge of this mobility is relatively poor due to difficulty in quantifying population-level movement patterns. Significant variation in the movement patterns of individual hosts means it is necessary to capture their fine-scale mobility in order to gain useful knowledge that can be extrapolated to a population level. Here we explore how the movements of people and their ruminants, and their exposure to various types of land cover, correlate with ruminant ownership and other demographic factors which could affect individual exposure to zoonoses. The study was conducted in Busia County, western Kenya, where the population are mostly subsistence farmers operating a mixed crop/livestock farming system. We used GPS trackers to collect movement data from 26 people and their ruminants for 1 week per individual in July/August 2016, and the study was repeated at the end of the same year to compare movement patterns between the short rainy and dry seasons respectively. We found that during the dry season, people and their ruminants travelled further on trips outside of the household, and that people spent less time on swampland compared to the short rainy season. Our findings also showed that ruminant owners spent longer and travelled further on trips outside the household than non-ruminant owners, and that people and ruminants from poorer households travelled further than people from relatively wealthier households. These results indicate that some individual-level mobility may be predicted by season and by household characteristics such as ruminant ownership and household wealth, which could have practical uses for assessing individual risk of exposure to some zoonoses and for future modelling studies of zoonosis transmission in similar rural areas.

1363-4593
Floyd, Jessica R.
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Ruktanonchai, Nick W.
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Wardrop, Nicola
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Tatem, Andrew J.
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Ogola, Joseph
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Fèvre, Eric M.
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Floyd, Jessica R.
b54620d7-9154-4807-a9a7-60d87001b0dc
Ruktanonchai, Nick W.
fe68cb8d-3760-4955-99fa-47d43f86580a
Wardrop, Nicola
8f3a8171-0727-4375-bc68-10e7d616e176
Tatem, Andrew J.
6c6de104-a5f9-46e0-bb93-a1a7c980513e
Ogola, Joseph
359c8a9f-1e6d-42ab-a54c-f7a705afa78b
Fèvre, Eric M.
d1fc8e05-7138-4a8d-bdcb-0cb8eb6bb6a3

Floyd, Jessica R., Ruktanonchai, Nick W., Wardrop, Nicola, Tatem, Andrew J., Ogola, Joseph and Fèvre, Eric M. (2019) Exploring fine-scale human and livestock movement in western Kenya. One Health, 7, [100081]. (doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2019.100081).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Human and livestock mobility are key factors in the transmission of several high-burden zoonoses such as rift valley fever and trypanosomiasis, yet our knowledge of this mobility is relatively poor due to difficulty in quantifying population-level movement patterns. Significant variation in the movement patterns of individual hosts means it is necessary to capture their fine-scale mobility in order to gain useful knowledge that can be extrapolated to a population level. Here we explore how the movements of people and their ruminants, and their exposure to various types of land cover, correlate with ruminant ownership and other demographic factors which could affect individual exposure to zoonoses. The study was conducted in Busia County, western Kenya, where the population are mostly subsistence farmers operating a mixed crop/livestock farming system. We used GPS trackers to collect movement data from 26 people and their ruminants for 1 week per individual in July/August 2016, and the study was repeated at the end of the same year to compare movement patterns between the short rainy and dry seasons respectively. We found that during the dry season, people and their ruminants travelled further on trips outside of the household, and that people spent less time on swampland compared to the short rainy season. Our findings also showed that ruminant owners spent longer and travelled further on trips outside the household than non-ruminant owners, and that people and ruminants from poorer households travelled further than people from relatively wealthier households. These results indicate that some individual-level mobility may be predicted by season and by household characteristics such as ruminant ownership and household wealth, which could have practical uses for assessing individual risk of exposure to some zoonoses and for future modelling studies of zoonosis transmission in similar rural areas.

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Accepted/In Press date: 7 February 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 10 February 2019
Published date: 1 June 2019

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 429505
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/429505
ISSN: 1363-4593
PURE UUID: 2430da8d-99e1-472b-8cda-e321a990dbd0
ORCID for Andrew J. Tatem: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7270-941X

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Date deposited: 28 Mar 2019 17:30
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:22

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Contributors

Author: Jessica R. Floyd
Author: Nick W. Ruktanonchai
Author: Nicola Wardrop
Author: Andrew J. Tatem ORCID iD
Author: Joseph Ogola
Author: Eric M. Fèvre

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