AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Book chapter |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Health consequences of pastoral sedentarization among Rendille of northern Kenya |
| Authors: | Fratkin, Elliot Nathan, Martha A. Roth, Eric Abella |
| Book title: | The poor are not us: poverty & pastoralism in Eastern Africa |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Pages: | 149-162 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Kenya |
| Subjects: | Rendille sedentarization child health malnutrition children |
| Abstract: | This study of the health and nutritional consequences of pastoral sedentarization is based on measurements of diet, morbidity and anthropometrics drawn from women and children under six in three Rendille communities in northern Kenya, one nomadic and two sedentary, in both a wet year (1990) and a dry year (1992). Morbidity patterns of diarrhoea, respiratory disease and fevers were similar for all communities in both years, although children in all three communities suffered fewer episodes of respiratory illness and fever in the 1992 sample. Both towns (Korr and Ngurunit) showed a higher number of respiratory disease and fever days than the nomadic community, and one town (Korr) had a higher anaemia rate. Dietary recall data showed wide differences in types of foods consumed in the three communities, with the nomadic Lewogoso consuming three times the amount of milk compared with residents in both towns. These sedentary communities relied much more on fats, starch and meat relative to Lewogoso. The authors believe that these dietary differences are the reasons for greater child malnutrition in the towns than among the nomads. Comparing the study groups via anthropometrics of weight for height, childhood malnutrition levels were comparable for all three communitites in the wet year. However, a major finding of the study was that, while there was much more wasting among the town children in the dry year, malnutrition did not increase in the nomadic sample in 1992. Economic differences do not seem to affect child health or nutritional status in any of the communities. The study suggests that the pastoral nomadic diet, particularly one dependent on camels' milk, offers children better resistance to the pressures of drought and is superior to sedentary alternatives, including town diets supplemented by grain-based famine-relief foods. |
