It’s not only what you say, it’s also how you say it: communicating Nipah virus prevention messages during an outbreak in Bangladesh

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Mahbub-Ul Alam¹  Hossain M. S. Sazzad¹  Rebeca Sultana¹  Momtaz Begum¹  M. Saiful Islam¹  Emily S. Gurley¹  Stephen P. Luby²  M. Jahangir Hossain³  Shahana Parveen⁴  Mahmudur Rahman⁵ 

[1] Infectious Diseases Division, icddr,b, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Infectious Diseases Division, icddr,b, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Global Health Protection Division, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia, USA;Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA;Infectious Diseases Division, icddr,b, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Medical Research Council Unit (UK), Banjul, The Gambia;Infectious Diseases Division, icddr,b, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Programme for Emerging Infections, Infectious Diseases Division, icddr,b, 68, Shaheed Tajuddin Ahmed Sarani, Mohakhali, 1212, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), Dhaka, Bangladesh;

关键词: Nipah virus;    Outbreak;    Prevention messages;    Communication strategy;    Anthropological approach;    Contextual understanding;    Bangladesh;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-016-3416-z

 received in 2015-11-26, accepted in 2016-06-27,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDuring a fatal Nipah virus (NiV) outbreak in Bangladesh, residents rejected biomedical explanations of NiV transmission and treatment and lost trust in the public healthcare system. Field anthropologists developed and communicated a prevention strategy to bridge the gap between the biomedical and local explanation of the outbreak.MethodsWe explored residents’ beliefs and perceptions about the illness and care-seeking practices and explained prevention messages following an interactive strategy with the aid of photos showed the types of contact that can lead to NiV transmission from bats to humans by drinking raw date palm sap and from person-to-person.ResultsThe residents initially believed that the outbreak was caused by supernatural forces and continued drinking raw date palm sap despite messages from local health authorities to stop. Participants in community meetings stated that the initial messages did not explain that bats were the source of this virus. After our intervention, participants responded that they now understood how NiV could be transmitted and would abstain from raw sap consumption and maintain safer behaviours while caring for patients.ConclusionsDuring outbreaks, one-way behaviour change communication without meaningful causal explanations is unlikely to be effective. Based on the cultural context, interactive communication strategies in lay language with supporting evidence can make biomedical prevention messages credible in affected communities, even among those who initially invoke supernatural causal explanations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2016