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BackgroundWorm infections are among the most prevalent neglected tropical diseases worldwide. Schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths infections, most common worm infections affecting Rwandan school-aged children, are addressed by the national deworming program since 2014. To date, no published studies have assessed the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the key implementers of the national deworming program conducted at village and school level. This study aimed to assess key stakeholders’ knowledge, attitudes, practices, and perspectives about the decentralized national deworming program.Methods/ Principal FindingsWe carried out a quantitative, cross-sectional study with complementary in-depth interviews in two districts of Rwanda in June 2021. From the 852 surveyed community health workers and teachers, 54.1% had a knowledge score considered good (≥80%). The mean knowledge score was 78.04%. From the multivariate analysis, lack of training was shown to increase the odds of having poor knowledge (OR 0.487, 95% CI: 0.328 – 0.722, p ConclusionOur findings demonstrate the importance of training community health workers and schoolteachers on worm infections as they are the key implementers of the deworming program. This would enhance their capacity to provide health education and sensitization on misconceptions and misinformation towards deworming. Moreover, research is needed to assess the impact of poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities on the prevalence of worm infections in Rwanda.AUTHOR SUMMARYWorm infections affect over 2 billion people worldwide, and the most common are schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminth infections. In Rwanda, the prevalence of soil-transmitted helminth infections can be as high as 45%, while the prevalence of schistosomiasis is 2.7% among school-aged children.The government of Rwanda continues to develop initiatives to eradicate worm infection, among which, the national decentralized deworming program, implemented at village and school level.In this program, community health workers collaborate with teachers and local leaders to administer deworming tablets, community sensitization and health education. To date, no published studies have been conducted to understand the experiences and perspectives of key stakeholders in the national deworming program in Rwanda. We conducted a quantitative analysis of the Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) of teachers and community health workers, and a qualitative assessment of the perspectives of local leaders in two of the most food insecure districts of Rwanda. The results show a gap in the knowledge of community health workers and teachers on worm infections. The study also revealed that there were some misconceptions about deworming tablets, which highlights the need to train key implementers of the program for them to transfer their knowledge to the broader community.

In the southern highlands of Madagascar, Betsileo free descendants strictly avoid marrying descendants of slaves, whom they regard as ‘unclean people’. A close examination of the history of a slave...

A long tradition of research in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries has investigated how people weigh individual welfare versus group welfare in their moral judgments. Relatively less research has investigated the generalizability of results across non-WEIRD populations. In the current study, we ask participants across nine diverse cultures (Bali, Costa Rica, France, Guatemala, Japan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Serbia, and the USA) to make a series of moral judgments regarding both third-party sacrifice for group welfare and first-person sacrifice for group welfare. In addition to finding some amount of cross-cultural variation on most of our questions, we also find two cross-culturally consistent judgments: (1) when individuals are in equivalent situations, overall welfare should be maximized, and (2) harm to individuals should be taken into account, and some types of individual harm can trump overall group welfare. We end by discussing the specific pattern of variable and consistent features in the context of evolutionary theories of the evolution of morality. UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIP)

In this article I argue that among the southern Betsileo slave descendants are essentialised by free descendants. After explaining how this striking case of psychological essentialism manifests in the local context, I provide experimental evidence for it and discuss the results of three cognitive tasks that I ran in the field. I then suggest that slaves were not essentialised in the pre-colonial era and contend that the essentialist construal only became entrenched in the aftermath of the 1896 abolition of slavery, which paradoxically triggered the historical process of essentialisation.

This article is concerned with the training and curing practices of Betsileo ombiasa (‘healers-diviners’), and their relationships with biomedical practitioners and Christian healers, in particular Fifohazana exorcists. We first give an account of what we think is characteristic in the process of becoming an ombiasa, highlighting in particular the role of ancestors and other spiritual entities. We then give a brief description of the ombiasa’s healing practices and the kind of remuneration they usually ask for. In the last part of the article we discuss their collaboration and conflicts with other health practitioners, showing how ombiasa are constantly adapting their practice to avoid open confrontations with their competitors, accommodate their patients’ expectations and continue to carve out a niche for themselves within Betsileo medical pluralism.

Pourquoi les descendants de « roturiers » (olompotsy) du sud des Hautes Terres centrales de Madagascar refusent-ils systematiquement de se marier avec des descendants d’« esclaves » (andevo) ? Pour tenter de repondre a cette question, l’auteur s’interesse a des descendants d’esclaves de cette region, appeles les Berosaina, qui possedent des terres et des tombes ancestrales et qui menent une existence assez comparable a celle des olompotsy sauf quand il s’agit de former des alliances matrimoniales. Il suggere que, contrairement a ce qui a ete avance precedemment, les descendants d’esclaves ne manquent pas de tombes. La determination de leur statut se fonde sur deux pratiques culturelles bien ancrees – les tetihara (ou discours prononces lors des funerailles) et l’enquete maritale – qui entretiennent la memoire sociale des « origines ». Par consequent, pour expliquer cet evitement du mariage, plusieurs niveaux d’analyse sont necessaires.

Je m’intéresse ici à la présence d’une étagère consacrée aux esclaves morts parmi les trois que l’on trouve dans les maisons betsileo, ainsi qu’au sens que ces étagères prennent dans les rituels de remerciements des ancêtres. Je suggère qu’il est nécessaire de distinguer trois sens différents mais complémentaires :les étagères ont un rôle religieux, idéologique, ou bien encore un rôle lié à la construction de la personne. J’examine quelques-unes des transformations de la société betsileo qui ont pris place depuis la colonisation, avant de montrer qu’aujourd’hui les « roturiers » et les descendants d’esclaves n’ont pas la même compréhension du symbolisme des étagères., info:eu-repo/semantics/published