Lauren Carruth, Diets, politics, and camel economies: a qualitative One Health study of zoonotic disease risk in pastoralist regions of eastern Ethiopia
A new study in the Social Science & Medicine journal co-authored by SIS Professor Lauren Carruth looks at how conflict, political instability, and informal economies can affect the risk of zoonotic diseases, or those that spread between animals and people. Because most research on the factors driving zoonotic diseases is often limited in conflict-affected and politically insecure locations, this study focuses on eastern Ethiopia, where many people rely on camels for food, medicine, transportation, and their livelihoods, and where conflict and displacement are common.
Between 2021 and 2024, Carruth and her co-authors used interviews and on-the-ground observation to study how people herd, trade, transport, care for, slaughter, and consume camels and camel products. They found that people and camels often live and travel in close contact with each other, while unpasteurized camel milk remains an important food and traditional medicine. Much of the camel trade and dairy production takes place through informal or unregulated markets, outside systems that monitor and control disease. Camels also move through areas where they may come into contact with wildlife, including national parks and remote wilderness routes. Conflict and displacement can push people and livestock into these areas, potentially increasing opportunities for diseases to spread between species.
This study highlights why it is important to look beyond formal markets and health systems when studying zoonotic disease. Through long-term ethnographic engagement, Carruth and her co-authors were able to understand how everyday practices, conflict, displacement, and informal economies can create unexpected pathways for disease transmission.