Participatory study

The full report of the survey is given in Irungu (2000). One of the important preliminary findings from the survey was that the households interviewed put trypansomosis as the most important disease affecting their cattle and they appeared to be able to recognise different forms of the disease. Trypanocidal drugs provided the main method of disease control but other indigenous methods were also used.

The researchers proposed in their report that some form of community-based method of tsetse control was needed to reduce the impact of the diseases. Before doing so, however, it was decided to investigate more thoroughly the Orma people´s knowledge of the disease and to seek their views on the way forward for improving its control. A study using participatory methods of ´matrix scoring´ and ´proportional piling´ was therefore instigated (Catley et al., 2002) in order to understand local perceptions of incidence of different diseases, their clinical signs and causes, and preferences for indigenous and modern disease control methods.

The participatory methods involved villagers placing stones in squares traced on the ground which described the clinical signs that they associated most with a particular disease. Drawings and objects to describe the different diseases and their possible clinical signs were put on the ground in the shape of a matrix with diseases in one direction and signs in another.