Covid-19 and Village-based Research
Covid-19 and Village-based Research
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During the early days of the Covid-19 induced lockdown in Uganda, I approached my Local Council 1 (Village) Chairperson in Jinja, Uganda about the possibility of safely working with village youth, many of whom were returning from University, to collect helpful information from village residents. We discussed the possibility of using this information to target government and private charitable support to the most vulnerable households in the village. The LC1 chairperson was enthusiastic about the possibility of being more informed about the circumstances of village residents. He recruited around a dozen youth, provided them with masks, and arranged a safe meeting location where we worked together to design a survey that would be administered to their neighbors and contacts from a village roster (with household phone contacts).
Studying materials that aid in thinking about village-based research and data collection.
After deliberating with the local government and several youth, we carried out surveys over the phone asking about household expenditures two weeks after the implementation of the Covid-19 induced lockdown. In this period, average daily income decreased from 20,000 UGX to 2,000 UGX (from $5.30 to $0.30) – of the 2 average household earners, 1.5 of them experienced loss of income. Simultaneously, households in the village are now expected to accommodate youth and other family members who retreated back home following school lockdowns and loss of employment in urban centers. In fact, 15% of interviewed households in the village reported that on average 3 additional members with an average age of 20 years old resided with them in the last few weeks due to the Covid-19 measures. Food prices increased by 100 to 200 percent, per capita household food consumption decreased by 50%, and 72% of households stated that they did not have have sufficient food to last them a week. Another 72% have observed a noticeable increase in crime and 49% a similar increase in domestic violence. Moreover, 41% stated that poverty is a problem during lockdown and 23% reported hunger as a problem.
Further analysis and discussions with the LC1 and neighbors revealed an important dimension of vulnerability was lack of access to land for agricultural cultivation. Of the households that were surveyed, 51% were engaged in agricultural cultivation and another 40% stated that they would be interested in growing if land were to be available (the survey was conducted during the first rainy season). We compiled a list of homes that seemed to be most vulnerable during the lockdown period and shared it with local leaders who used the information to improve targeting of resources.
A second aim of the survey activity was to gauge awareness of the symptoms and preventative measures associated with Covid-19. At the time of the survey, 75% of homes correctly identified "cough, fever, and shortness of breath" as the main known symptoms of Covid-19 at the time (as indicated by the WHO) as opposed to symptoms such as "Dizziness, running nose, fever" or "Diarrhea, fever, sore throat." The group was encouraged by the knowledge of Covid-19 symptoms in the village and the accompanying preventative measures that were being implemented. We suspected that this awareness was heightened by a overly pessimistic belief of the morbidity of Covid-19 at the time: when asked about the morbidity rate of Covid-19 compared to Ebola (an epidemic that Uganda was briefly touched by in 2019), the average respondent attributed a morbidity rate of 35.7% to Covid-19 and 42.5% to Ebola - the latter being much more accurate than the former. In the early days of the pandemic, this inflated Covid-19 morbidity belief seemed to have contributed to strong social stigmas of those suspected of having Covid-19 symptoms. For this reason, our group also shared the most up to date statistics on Covid-19 prevention measures and morbidity rates to the respondents in the survey. 75% of respondents indicated they would change their morbidity beliefs after hearing these statistics from our team.
We shared all of this information to the LC1 leaders and offered to assist with any other future projects that might benefit from added support. We learned that the LC1 and other levels of governance did in fact use this information to aid vulnerable homes during the Covid-19 lockdowns. The LC1 chairperson voiced appreciation that he was able to learn more about his community members and also requested that we find a way of documenting the number of school-going children (by grade) in the village. We learned that the reason for this was so that the District Education Office could provide take-home education packets to the school-going children in the village.
Bonus Insights from Henry Wanume, One of Our Village Researchers
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