Social and cultural features of cholera and shigellosis in peri-urban and rural communities of Zanzibar

BMC Infectious Diseases

Table 4 Perceived causes for a cholera vignette in peri-urban and rural Zanzibar, n = 356

	Peri-urban site, n = 179				Rural site, n = 177
	How reported?^b				How reported?^b
Category^a	Total Reported %	Fraction spon.	Most important %	Mean prominence^c	Total Reported %	Fraction spon.	Most important %	Mean prominence^c
Ingestion	98.3	0.61	17.3	2.11	96.6	0.37	22.6	2.00	*
Drinking contaminated water	96.1	0.40	10.1	1.65	94.4	0.24	16.4	1.66
Eating unprotected/spoiled food	95.5	0.45	7.3	1.60	94.4	0.18	5.1	1.27	***
Eating forbidden food	27.4	0.00	0.0	0.27	54.8	0.00	1.1	0.58	***
Eating soil	36.9	0.00	0.0	0.37	48.6	0.01	0.0	0.49	*
Behaviour	96.1	0.28	4.5	1.36	94.4	0.44	11.3	1.69	**
Contact with contaminated water	85.5	0.20	1.7	1.07	91.0	0.42	9.6	1.58	***
Not washing hands	92.2	0.14	2.8	1.13	88.1	0.12	1.7	1.03
Environment	100.0	0.89	70.9	4.02	98.3	0.68	37.3	2.77	***
Dirty environment	99.4	0.84	61.5	3.68	96.0	0.62	24.9	2.30	***
Flies	99.4	0.34	9.5	1.62	94.4	0.28	12.4	1.58
Malaria	15.1	0.00	0.0	0.15	48.0	0.02	0.0	0.49	***
Worms	13.4	0.00	0.0	0.13	46.9	0.00	0.0	0.47	***
Magico-religious causes	94.4	0.07	7.3	1.23	91.0	0.16	28.8	1.92	***
God's will	93.3	0.07	7.3	1.22	86.4	0.16	27.7	1.83	***
Witchcraft	20.7	0.00	0.0	0.21	45.8	0.01	1.1	0.50	***
Miscellaneous	5.0	1.00	0.0	0.10	27.1	1.00	0.0	0.54	***
Other	3.9	1.00	0.0	0.08	13.6	1.00	0.0	0.27	**
Cannot say	1.1	1.00	0.0	0.02	13.6	1.00	0.0	0.27	***

^a Categories ordered alphabetically within each group (bold), except "cannot say". Categories reported by less than 5% not listed; ^b Columns indicate percentage of reported categories, fraction of spontaneously mentioned categories and whether a category was identified as most important; ^c Mean prominence based on values assigned to each reported category (0 = not reported, 1 = reported after probing, 2 = reported spontaneously, 3 = identified as most important).
Wilcoxon test used to compare mean prominence between both sites (* p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, *** p ≤ 0.001).

ISSN: 1471-2334