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

Details

• Alternative Title:
  BMC Public Health
• Personal Author:
  Parveen, Shahana ; Islam, M. Saiful ; Begum, Momtaz ; Alam, Mahbub-Ul ; Sazzad, Hossain M. S. ; Sultana, Rebeca ; Rahman, Mahmudur ; Gurley, Emily S. ; Hossain, M. Jahangir ; Luby, Stephen P.
• Description:
  Background
  
  During 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.
  
  Methods
  
  We 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.
  
  Results
  
  The 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.
  
  Conclusions
  
  During 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.
  
  Electronic supplementary material
  
  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3416-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Animals Causality Chiroptera/virology Communicable Disease Control Culture Disease Outbreaks Drinking Feeding Behavior Health Behavior Health Communication Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice Henipavirus Infections/epidemiology Henipavirus Infections/prevention & Control Humans Nipah Virus Phoeniceae Plant Exudates/adverse Effects Plant Exudates/chemistry Public Health Practice Research Article Residence Characteristics

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• Source:
  BMC Public Health. 16.
• Pubmed ID:
  27495927
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC4974711
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Bangladesh
• Volume:
  16
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:eb8ef353011005a06dcf32cb324a9a0a07ab046fc620bc1fbbe1221f1edb8043
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/41102/cdc_41102_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 702.02 KB ]