Joan Muela Ribera

Universitat Rovira i Virgili | URV · Department of Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Work

Este artículo es una reflexión sobre la participación de las comunidades en dos proyectos de Salud Global que usaron Administración Masiva de Medicamentos (AMM). Dada su complejidad, se recomienda la participación comunitaria para adaptar las intervenciones que usan AMM a las condiciones locales. Sin embargo, los estudios que evalúan estas interven...

In their roles as nurses, data collectors, or other, fieldworkers undertake myriad tasks working intimately with and on the bodies of others – a type of work called ‘body work’. This work further includes the micro-political relations shaping these interactions, and studies have shown the importance of these relationships in the success of clinical...

Background Despite freely distributed insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and health information campaigns to increase their use among populations at risk, malaria transmission persists in forested areas in Vietnam, especially among ethnic minority communities. A mixed-methods study was conducted in four villages of Ca Dong and M’nong ethnicity in Cent...

Background Although many success stories exist of Village Health Workers (VHWs) improving primary health care, critiques remain about the medicalisation of their roles in disease-specific interventions. VHWs are placed at the bottom of the health system hierarchy as cheap and low-skilled volunteers, irrespective of their highly valued social and po...

Mass drug administration (MDA), used increasingly in malaria eradication efforts, involves administering medication to an entire target population regardless of individual-level disease status. This strategy requires high levels of coverage and compliance. Previous studies have assessed individual and structural factors affecting MDA coverage, but...

Background Despite significant strides made in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality in the Greater Mekong Subregion, malaria transmission continues amongst the most ‘hard-to-reach’, such as forest-goers and mobile and migrant populations, who face access obstacles to malaria diagnosis and treatment. As such, regional malaria elimination strateg...

Background Malaria transmission in The Gambia decreased substantially over the last 20 years thanks to the scale-up of control interventions. However, malaria prevalence is still relatively high in eastern Gambia and represents both a health and a financial burden for households. This study aims to quantify the out-of-pocket costs and productivity...

Background: Despite free distribution of insecticidal-treated nets (ITNs) and long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) to populations at-risk, malaria transmission persists in forested areas in Vietnam especially amongst ethnic minority communities. A study was conducted between April 2009 and December 2010 in four villages of Ca Dong and M’nong ethn...

Integrating mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) health care into the public health system has become a global priority, with mental health, and well-being now being part of the Sustainable Development Goals. In the aim to provide good quality care for MNS disorders, understanding patients' pathways to care is key. This qualitative study e...

Background In some areas of the world, breast milk is seen as a potential source of child diarrhoea. While this belief has been explored in African and Southeast Asian countries, it remains vastly understudied in Latin American contexts. We investigate socio-cultural factors contributing to breastfeeding cessation in rural high-altitude populations...

Background: Community participation in global health interventions may improve outcomes and solve complex health issues. Although numerous community participatory approaches have been developed and introduced, there has been little focus on “how” and “who” to involve in the implementation of community-based clinical trials where unequal distributio...

Background Selectively targeting and treating malaria-infected individuals may further decrease parasite carriage in low-burden settings. Using a trans-disciplinary approach, a reactive treatment strategy to reduce Plasmodium falciparum prevalence in participating communities was co-developed and tested. Methods This is a 2-arm, open-label, cluste...

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends consideration of mass drug administration (MDA) for malaria control in low-endemic settings approaching elimination. However, MDA remains a controversial strategy, as multiple individual, social, and operational factors have shown to affect its acceptability at local levels. This is further...

Background Despite significant strides made in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality in the Greater Mekong Subregion, malaria transmission continues amongst the most ‘hard-to-reach’ such as forest-goers and mobile and migrant populations, who face access obstacles to malaria diagnosis and treatment. As such, regional malaria elimination strategi...

Background In some parts of the world, breast milk is seen as a potential source of child diarrhoea. While this belief has been explored in African and Southeast Asian countries, it remains vastly understudied in Latin American contexts. We investigate cultural factors contributing to breastfeeding cessation in rural high-altitude populations of th...

With significant declines in malaria, infections are increasingly clustered in households, or groups of households where malaria transmission is higher than in surrounding household/villages. To decrease transmission in such cases, reactive interventions target household members of clinical malaria cases, with the intervention unit (e.g., the "hous...

The impact of different types of reactive case detection and/or treatment strategies for malaria elimination depends on high coverage and participants’ adherence. However, strategies to optimise adherence are limited, particularly for people with asymptomatic or no infections. As part of a cluster-randomized trial to evaluate the effect of reactive...

Background: With a decline in malaria burden, innovative interventions and tools are required to reduce malaria transmission further. Mass drug administration (MDA) of artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) has been identified as a potential tool to further reduce malaria transmission, where coverage of vector control interventions is already...

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends consideration of mass drug administration (MDA) for malaria control in low-endemic settings approaching elimination. However, MDA remains a controversial strategy, as multiple individual, social, and operational factors have shown to affect its acceptability at local levels. This is further...

BACKGROUND With a declining malaria burden, innovative interventions and tools are required to further reduce the transmission of the disease. Mass drug administration (MDA) of an artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) has been identified as a potential tool to further reduce malaria transmission where coverage of vector control interventions...

In this article, we explore relationships between risk and emotions among Bolivian women living with Chagas disease, and the implications of this for their diagnosis and treatment in Catalonia, Spain. Here, risk is a social phenomenon, while emotions are conceived as embedded in the sociocultural and relational world. Emotions play key risk-related...

Solar disinfection (SODIS) of drinking water is a cost-effective household water treatment (HWT) method. Despite its simplicity of use, evidence suggest that SODIS water uptake remains lower than implementers planned. In this paper, we investigate socio-cultural factors associated with SODIS water uptake in rural Andean Bolivia. We conducted 28 sem...

Background The Community Health Worker (CHW) programme is recognised as key for providing healthcare to communities, particularly in remote locations. CHWs are usually volunteers, nominated by their communities and trained to provide basic care and prevention for common illnesses. However, differences in disease-specific programmes aimed at meeting...

Background Innovative and cost-effective strategies that clear asymptomatic malaria infections are required to reach malaria elimination goals, but remain a challenge. This mixed methods study explored people’s attitudes towards the reactive treatment of compound contacts of malaria cases with a 3-day course of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DHAP)...

Background Systematic treatment of all individuals living in the same compound of a clinical malaria case may clear asymptomatic infections and possibly reduce malaria transmission, where this is focal. High and sustained coverage is extremely important and requires active community engagement. This study explores a community-based approach to trea...

Background There is growing awareness of the likely impact increased numbers of LLINs will have on the environment, if not disposed of or recycled appropriately. As part of a World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) pilot study to assess environmentally-sound and cost-effective LLIN recycling strategies, the U...

Background Malaria risk can vary markedly between households in the same village, or between villages, but the determinants of this “micro-epidemiological” variation in malaria risk remain poorly understood. This study aimed to identify factors that explain fine-scale variation in malaria risk across settings and improve definitions and methods for...

Acute gastroenteritis (AG) is frequently caused by infectious intestinal diseases (IID) including food- and waterborne pathogens of public health importance. Among these pathogens, Campylobacter spp. plays a major role. Many European countries monitor selected IIDs within disease surveillance systems. In Switzerland, the information on IIDs is rest...

Patients’ adherence to malaria treatment is a key issue in malaria control and elimination efforts. Previous studies have reported on problems with adherence to anti-malarials, which in part can be related to adverse drug reactions (ADRs) of anti-malarials. However, there has been a relative inattention to the cultural and social aspects of these a...

Human population movements currently challenge malaria elimination in low transmission foci in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Using a mixed-methods design, combining ethnography (n = 410 interviews), malariometric data (n = 4996) and population surveys (n = 824 indigenous populations; n = 704 Khmer migrants) malaria vulnerability among different typ...

Malaria control along the Vietnam-Cambodia border presents a challenge for both countries' malaria elimination targets as the region is forested, inhabited by ethnic minority populations, and potentially characterized by early and outdoor malaria transmission. A mixed methods study assessed the vulnerability to malaria among the Jarai population li...

Collecting blood samples from individuals recruited into clinical research projects in sub-Saharan Africa can be challenging. Strikingly, one of the reasons for participant reticence is the occurrence of local rumors surrounding "blood stealing" or "blood selling." Such fears can potentially have dire effects on the success of research projects-for...

Over the last years, the number of clinical trials carried out in low-income countries with poor medical infrastructure and limited access to health care has increased. In these settings, the decision of participating in a clinical study may be influenced by factors related to participants' vulnerability that limit the efficacy of the informed cons...

Adherence to effective malaria medication is extremely important in the context of Cambodia's elimination targets and drug resistance containment. Although the public sector health facilities are accessible to the local ethnic minorities of Ratanakiri province (Northeast Cambodia), their illness itineraries often lead them to private pharmacies sel...

this project was made possible by financial support from the Spanish agency for international Cooperation (aECi) through the Vita program The VITA Program was created in January 2004 by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (Ministry of For-eign Affairs and International Cooperation), and represents an effort to achieve optimum coordinat...

Extensive systematic literature review on social aspects of LF, onchocerciasis and HAT, including (i) social and psychological impacts of these diseases, (ii) social representations, and (iii) access to care and adherence/compliance with MDA regimes

Introducción Ronnald Frankenberg solía decir que un incidente puede ser más revelador que una incidencia. A veces una frase escuchada al azar en el mercado, o un comentario en apariencia intrascendente, nos abre los ojos a problemas que no veíamos, a pesar de estar ahí. Este artículo está inspirado en uno de estos incidentes, regalos del azar que,...

Background While coverage of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLIN) has steadily increased, a growing number of studies report gaps between net ownership and use. We conducted a mixed-methods social science study assessing the importance of net preference and use after Olyset® LLINs were distributed through a mass campaign in rural communitie...

Resumen: En este artículo nos centramos en las lógicas culturales que subyacen en Iquitos (Perú) en las interpretaciones locales de los efectos adversos de la medicación antipalúdica y las recidivas de la enfermedad. Mostramos cómo la evidencia que surge del modelo humoral amazónico-peruano contrasta con las reacciones adversas definidas desde la e...

Background: Over the last years, the number of clinical trials carried out in low-income countries with poor medical infrastructure and limited access to health care has increased. In these settings, the decision of participating in a clinical study may be influenced by factors related to participants' vulnerability that limit the efficacy of the i...

The mobilization of affordable measures and treatments has brought health services and health care tools closer to the poor. This is par-ticularly the case in the context of malaria con-trol and elimination efforts. Still, the other side of delivery is use: the targeted populations have to access and accept these resources. Although the need to bet...

Victims of Buruli ulcer disease (BUD) frequently report to specialized units at a late stage of the disease. This delay has been associated with local beliefs and a preference for traditional healing linked to a reportedly mystical origin of the disease. We assessed the role beliefs play in determining BUD sufferers' choice between traditional and...

Long-lasting insecticidal hammocks (LLIHs) are being evaluated as an additional malaria prevention tool in settings where standard control strategies have a limited impact. This is the case among the Ra-glai ethnic minority communities of Ninh Thuan, one of the forested and mountainous provinces of Central Vietnam where malaria morbidity persist du...

In the wake of the Millennium Development Goals, the focus on vulnerability and access to care has increasingly gained ground in the malaria social science literature. However, little emphasis has been given to the cumulative processes of vulnerability. In this article, we draw on ethnographic data, in particular on case studies, gathered in southe...

While IPTp-SP is currently being scaled up in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the coverage with the required>or=2 doses of SP remains considerably short of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) goal of 80%, not to mention of the recently advocated universal coverage. The study triangulates quantitative data from a health center randomized community-based trial on...

Despite being free of charge, treatment adherence to 7-day primaquine for the radical cure of Plasmodium vivax was estimated at 62.2% among patients along the Iquitos-Nauta road in the Peruvian Amazon. The principal reason for non-adherence was the perceived adverse effects related to local humoral illness conceptions that hold that malaria produce...

Despite Vietnam's success in reducing malaria mortality and morbidity over the last decade, malaria persists in the forested and mountainous areas of the central and southern provinces, where more than 50% of the clinical cases and 90% of severe cases and malaria deaths occur. Between July 2005 and September 2006, a multi-method study, triangulatin...

Translation of the abstract into Spanish by Joan Muela Ribera (0.03 MB DOC)

Such labeling of some neglected tropical diseases as ‘‘stigmatizing’’ may indeed increase political commitment to these diseases [2], but it also bears some risks. Research can easily end up confirming previous assumptions, i.e., that it is the social stigma associated with the disease that leads to socialisolation, hampers access to care, and redu...

165) Culture utilisée dans les débats scientifiques et politiques. Mondialisation (unification) et développement des identités locales. Identité: différents niveaux: personnel et de groupe. Métissage culturel vu comme un antidote aux fondamentalisme identitaire. La recerca que presentem tot seguit proposa un estudi comparatiu de les lògiques de cla...

[This corrects the article on p. e321 in vol. 2, PMID: 18923711.].

Author Summary The cost burden of free of charge Buruli ulcer disease (Bu) hospital treatment is not sustainable for a majority of patients and their families in Central Cameroon. The long term nature of Bu taxes the patients' and their families' resources often to a breaking point, consequently often leading to the abandonment of patients by the f...

Building on existing knowledge from social science work on malaria, the authors propose two models for studying social science aspects of malaria in pregnancy.

Longer version of this article (128 KB DOC).

Through a transcultural and historical analysis of Christian Europe, Jewish, Arabic- Muslim, Subsaharian, American Indigenous and Creole Worlds, the current project is intended to explain the origin, process, meanings, social and cultural justifications and the current uses of "hybridation" concept. Also, the project tries to understand the social...