BACKGROUND Pastoralists in low-income countries usually live in close proximity to their animals and thus represent an important repository of information about livestock disease. Since wild and domestic animals often mix freely whilst grazing, pastoralists are also able to observe first-hand the diseases that are present in wildlife and as such are key informants in disease outbreaks in sylvat...

BACKGROUND Globally, an estimated 289,000 maternal deaths occurred in 2013. Majority of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Mobility of pastoralists is a well-recognized survival strategy in arid and semi-arid land of sub-Saharan Africa. However governments often encourage settlement as a solution to the difficulty of providing health services for mobile pastoralists....

Background Demographic information is foundational for the planning and management of social programmes, in particular health services. The existing INDEPTH network surveillance sites are limited to coverage of sedentary populations. Including mobile populations in this approach would be expensive, time consuming and possibly low in accuracy. Very little is known about the demography of mobile ...

BACKGROUND Zoonoses account for the most commonly reported emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is limited knowledge on how pastoral communities perceive zoonoses in relation to their livelihoods, culture and their wider ecology. This study was carried out to explore local knowledge and perceptions on zoonoses among pastoralists in Tanzania. METHO...

Social responsibility of pastoralists is one of the most important elements and an integral part of rangelands exploitation. It not only leads to better rangeland health, but also enhances exploiters’ satisfaction for continuous sustainable utilization of rangelands. The present study investigated the role of social responsibility in rangelands condition in nomadic areas of Gonbad County in Gol...

The agents represent mobile pastoralists that have herds consisting of 200 animals. The risk of disease transmission increaseswhen agents are in close proximity, for examplewhen sharing common grazing areas or transhumance routes. To represent the risk of transmission due to proximity we use a bu er with a fixed radius for all agents for the entire year. We change the bu er size to explore di e...

Natural resources have been attracted a great deal of attentions and have been frequently exploited for many years. Dust is one of natural disasters mainly in recent years; here, in south west of Iran, it had destroyed the rangelands. The dust has detrimental effects on the rangelands, livestock and livestock production. High concentrations of dust may lead to the coughing, nasal discharge, whe...

African pastoralists have historically used aggression strategically to restock after major losses. On the basis of anthropological studies of African pastoral societies, cultural psychologists have linked the psychological roots of pastoral aggression to the cultural complex of honor. This article is a critical examination of this link. It argues, first, that honor cultures are likely to be fo...

The study which was conducted in rural communities of Kwara State, Nigeria set to uncover how pastoralists‟ families cope with their livelihoods when their husbands have gone grazing with the cattle. It examined the social and financial coping strategies of their families through Focus group discussions and interviews with pastoralists, their wives and some extension agents. The findings reveal...

Modeling the movements of humans and animals is critical to understanding the transmission of infectious diseases in complex social and ecological systems. In this paper, we focus on the movements of pastoralists in the Far North Region of Cameroon, who follow an annual transhumance by moving between rainy and dry season pastures. Describing, summarizing, and modeling the transhumance movements...