Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the methodology and results of a transdisciplinary operational research conducted by the NGO Comitato Collaborazione Medica in the rural district of Filtu (Somali Region, Ethiopia) and on the specific contribution of the ethnographic and anthropological approaches to fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

Between July 2015 and February 2016, the Italian NGO Comitato Collaborazione Medica (CCM) implemented an operational research (OR) in the rural district of Filtu (Somali Region, Ethiopia) financed by the Swiss Development Cooperation and based on the One Health approach. The research aimed at conducting an in-depth ethnography of the needs, perceptions and behaviours of pastoralist communities in relation to health, sicknesses and human-animal interaction. Special attention was given to the socio-cultural, structural and economic hindrances preventing the access to existing healthcare and veterinary facilities. Moreover, the study reviewed the strategies of adaptation and resilience enacted by the pastoralists groups facing environmental, social and political transformations and conflicts.

The OR multidisciplinary team was coordinated by a social anthropologist and involved local and international staff, composed of cultural mediators, health workers, veterinarians, public health and environmental experts, applied meteorologists and geographers. The paper highlights the way in which the application of the ethnographic methodology and the anthropological perspective to fieldwork allowed integrating these plural scientific contributions with the community members' knowledge and experiences and building an interactive dialogue among research staff, local authorities and household members. The main result of the transdisciplinary and intercultural approach is the participatory identification of specific strategies of intervention, acknowledged and endorsed by the pastoralist communities, to enhance the health of humans and animals. Moving from these strategies, CCM is now developing a wider One Health project-line, finalized to promote a better and more sustainable human, animal and environmental health in its areas of intervention.