Facilitators and Barriers to Community-Based Livestock Abortion Reporting for Rift Valley Fever Surveillance in Uganda: A COM-B Analysis
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Rift Valley fever disease (RVF), a priority zoonosis under the African Union Zoonotic Disease Control Plan (2025-2029), inflicts substantial economic losses via livestock abortion storms. Despite its profound impact, abortion reporting remains suboptimal, impeding timely RVF surveillance and response. This qualitative study examined facilitators and barriers to community-based livestock abortion reporting in Isingiro district, Uganda, employing the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation–Behaviour (COM-B) framework within an implementation science lens. We conducted 29 key informant interviews with national/district policymakers and technical officers, alongside 17 focus group discussions involving livestock owners, abattoir operators, and local leaders. Verbatim transcripts were subjected to deductive thematic analysis using NVivo-12.
Findings indicate that abortion reporting constitutes a nonlinear, reciprocal process necessitating synergistic COM-B interventions. Facilitators encompassed (1) capabilities, including mobile phones and social media (e.g., WhatsApp); national laboratories (Uganda Virus Research Institute, Central Public Health Laboratory, National Animal Diseases Diagnostics and Epidemiological Centre [NADDEC]), and the Ministry of Health’s Emergency Operations Centre for real-time coordination; (2) opportunities, such as established community structures (monthly local leaders’ meetings, community health workers) and integrated surveillance (e.g., tuberculosis contact tracing, Mobile Trac platform); (3) Motivations, driven by fears of economic and cultural livestock losses and RVF severity. Barriers included: (1) capabilities, marked by inadequate district veterinary laboratories and transport; (2) opportunities, hindered by economic concerns affecting trade and tourism and the lack of a local RVF name impeding recognition/reporting. (3) motivations, eroded by absent post-report feedback and suboptimal veterinary consultation practices.
Based on our findings, we recommend that the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries should integrate abortion reporting into Uganda’s Electronic Surveillance platform (EMA-i), co-develop vernacular RVF names with communities, institute “no blame” reporting protocols to mitigate economic sensitivities, and bolster district-level veterinary laboratory capacity to foster sustainable RVF surveillance.
Author Summary
Rift Valley fever disease (RVF) is a zoonotic disease of significant public health and veterinary concern in sub-Saharan Africa. These outbreaks caused notable economic loss resulting from abortion storms. However, the huge losses are due to the fact that RVF outbreaks are always detected late. In this project, we rigorously applied a robust theoretical Capability, Opportunity, Motivation and Behavioural (COM-B) framework for mapping the complex behavioural landscape surrounding livestock abortion reporting. To achieve this, we used a qualitative research design with 29 key informant interviews and 17 focus group discussions among affected livestock owners and policymakers in Uganda during the months of March to May 2023.
In this study, we found key facilitators being the availability of phones and communication platforms, community governance mechanisms like monthly local leaders’ meetings and trusted community health workers. On the other hand, we unpacked barriers to community-level reporting of farm abortions, such as the economic sensitivity of RVF in Uganda, the absence of a local name for RVF, and the lack of laboratory diagnostic services at the district level. The Behaviour of abortion reporting requires joint interventions that leverage existing capability and opportunities sustained by triggered and reinforced motivation.
